Feint of Heart
by KADH
Summary: Grissom and Sara aren't the only ones back in Vegas. Hannah West returns. And this time it's personal. Takes place post episodes 1601/2 "Immortality," circa late November 2015.
1. One: Zebras

**Feint of Heart**

Grissom and Sara aren't the only ones back in Vegas.

Hannah West returns.

And this time it's personal.

 _Takes place post episodes 1601/2 "Immortality,"_

 _circa late November 2015._

xxxxxxx

To second chances best not squandered...

And happy beginnings -

For who can resist a happy beginning?

And to VC and JH who stayed despite it all.

Your friendship is a debt I can never repay.

And to Miss G: Everyday -

And always -

xxxxxxx

"Words can never be enough.

Only love can settle such an enormous debt,"

Alan Bradley

Love is not the end; only the beginning...

xxxxxxx

 **One: Zebras**

"Sharon, it's not like I didn't want to go out shopping with you today," wheedled Marcus Walters, the tall, lanky, as yet dark-haired, late fifty something - when he chose to admit it - former construction foreman and current campus safety officer, into his cell.

While this statement wasn't precisely true - Walters would rather sit through a second root canal than have to brave Black Friday shoppers - he didn't need a second blowout with his wife of nearly twenty years in as many days.

"But we both know I had to work," he protested.

"I need this job. _We_ need this job."

Which was true. The Vegas economy may have improved over the past few years for many, but with his twenty-six weeks of unemployment benefits now a long distant memory, for Walters, a job was a job, seasonal or otherwise. Besides, it was easy work; easy money.

Mostly, he just tooled around campus making sure all the buildings were locked up tight and there was nothing suspicious going on.

As his rounds typically centered on the campus's academic units, the average graveyard shift proved fairly uneventful: late leaving workers needing to be escorted to their cars, the occasional dead battery jumped or lock jimmied, that sort of thing.

And while Black Friday madness with all its attendant crowds, chaos, and calamities may have raged elsewhere in Vegas, the absence of staff and students off enjoying the long Thanksgiving weekend left the WLVU campus no more populated than a ghost town.

Marcus hadn't even bothered to complain when dorm coverage had been temporarily added to his duties. _Big deal._ All he had to do was check the exterior doors. He didn't even need to turn off his car to do that.

At the curb, he left the Ford idling, driver door open.

 _Less than two more hours_ , he though as he jostled the dormitory's locked doors.

Less than two more hours and he could finally go home and finally sleep. If he could somehow find a way to placate his wife.

He was still trying to work out a way to do just that when several things happened all at once: two Las Vegas Police cruisers wailed as they streaked past, drowning out his car radio's loud, nearly wholly unintelligible squawk and he realized, much to his chagrin, that busy talking with his wife, he had been ignoring the persistent beeping of his call waiting for the better part of five minutes.

More intent on checking up on whatever was suddenly going on than where he was going, Walters nearly took a tumble as he raced towards his waiting car. Swearing, he hurriedly righted himself and was about to continue on his way when he caught sight of what had nearly tripped him up.

His eyes went wide and sans excuse nor any further explanation, he murmured, "Honey, I gotta go," into his phone.

xxxxxxx

Las Vegas at seven in the morning would usually find Sara Sidle wide awake and theoretically nearing the end of yet another graveyard shift, not sound asleep and nearly snoring as she was that Friday.

But with a three-week shark study in San Francisco behind her and at least two, if not three, weeks of court ahead, diurnal hours, however normally unaccustomed, were proving far more _de rigueur_ these days.

Not that she wasn't enjoying her quiet mornings at home. Quite the contrary.

Of course that had more to do with the man currently curled up close beside her than the new hours.

It took her a second insistent ring of her phone to realize that was what had roused her, phone calls having been blissfully rare the last few months, those of the startle you out of sleep variety even more so.

Bleary-eyed, Sara reached for her cell and without bothering to check the caller ID, answered with a whispered bark of "Sidle."

She was promptly greeted by the even more hassled than usual tones of Vegas' current sheriff, Conrad Ecklie.

Not bothering with either acknowledgement or apology, he launched in: "Remember how you said you owed me one -"

"Two actually -" Sara corrected, recalling that she had indeed said as much to him.

It was the least she could do, she reasoned after Ecklie had been so uncharacteristically understanding when it had come to her last rather impromptu departure.

Still, she sighed, "Didn't take you long to collect."

As the alarm clock on her side of the bed announced it was only just past seven and this being a good hour, if not two, before Ecklie usually hit the office, Sara reckoned this definitely wasn't a social call.

Which meant only one thing:

"You're short -"

It wasn't a question.

Nor was Sara all that surprised. Despite Catherine Willows having taken up Sara's recently vacated directorship, with Nick Stokes and D.B. Russell relocated and Julie Finn gone, even with Catherine's daughter Lindsey now on board, the lab was likely to be perpetually short staffed these days.

With this new status quo technically at least partially her fault, Sara, in a fit of utter contentment filled euphoria, had offered - volunteered actually - to help cover any staffing shortages the lab might have while she was in town for the next few weeks with the Freeman rape trial.

Lying there with Gil Grissom still snuggled skin on skin close beside her, she was currently seriously regretting her magnanimity.

As if echoing her as yet unspoken sentiments, Hank, from his perch at the foot of the bed, raised his head and let out a disgruntled whine.

However much the now very much awake Sara might share the boxer's sentiments, she tried to keep it from her, "Conrad, can you give me a second?"

Since it had been well past one in the morning when she and Grissom had finally surrendered to sleep, Sara thought it best to let him slumber on a little longer.

Her concern proved a little too little too late.

While she had managed to ease herself from Grissom's protective grasp and make it halfway out of bed, there still came from behind her the more somnolent than curious call of " _Honey?_ "

Sara, palming her phone's receiver, hurriedly replied, "It's just the lab. Go back to sleep, Gil."

This not being all that uncommon an experience, albeit not so much as of late, Gil Grissom merely mumbled and migrated more over into the warmth of her side of the bed; Sara only shook her head and smiled.

Reluctant as she might be, she slipped naked from the sheets. Shivering at the abrupt loss of the warmth of both bed and body, Sara snagged Grissom's distractedly discarded Oxford of the night before from the floor and hastily shrugged it over her shoulders before padding off into the bathroom.

The door finally closed firmly behind her, she returned to her call.

"Sorry about that. So?"

"Third 419 this morning," answered Ecklie without preamble.

That was unusual, even for Vegas.

"Greg and Morgan pulled a hanging," he added after a beat. "Catherine and Lindsey were already out on a body dump -"

"Leaving me with?" Sara asked.

"A second suicide. Jumper. WLVU campus."

"'Tis the season for it," came Sara's not so merry reply.

"You did say you'd come in," Ecklie reminded her.

 _True_.

As she withdrew the neatly folded spare change of clothes from the center cabinet (as ever kept there for just such an eventuality - it never hurt to be prepared), Sara did the math in her head:

 _Shower. Dress. Coffee, yes, but no time to stop for breakfast, but that was okay._

 _Campus no more than fifteen minutes away and there certainly wouldn't be traffic to contend with, not today_.

"Give me half an hour. I'm on my way."

xxxxxxx

In the midst of hurriedly towel drying her hair, Sara mused that being ousted out of bed when the sun was just starting to creep into the sky was definitely not what she had planned for the day.

With the Deputy District Attorney on the Freeman case occupied with her own holiday plans and Sara having finished, with Grissom's help, a thorough and exhaustive review of the evidence the day before, Sara hadn't really made any actual plans for Black Friday apart from staying as far away from the madness as humanly possible. An easy enough thing to do as Sara still loathed shopping on principle.

Albeit the sudden glint of gold reflected in the mirror did serve to remind her that she did have that dinner with Betty Grissom to get through that night.

After only a week, Sara was still getting used to the reassuring weight of a wedding ring on her hand again, but it proved a pleasant and comforting thing to have to become reaccustomed to. Dinner with Betty, not so much.

Particularly as recently wedded husband and wife would be springing their good news upon Sara's once again mother-in-law (the couple having mutually regarded their remarriage as the sort of news best sprung in person, or so each was assiduously maintaining. For however much Grissom might deny ever being intimidated by his mother, the elder Mrs. Grissom did have that effect on people. Some things didn't change).

Then tomorrow at breakfast, the two of them would tell the team.

Family was family after all.

Even Jim Brass was planning to stop by after his usual security gig at The Eclipse.

It would be good to have the gang back together again and for the sharing of good news rather than yet another problematic case.

Well, it would be mostly good news.

Sara would have to tell them all about her mother, too, before the defense outed her to the rest of the world. She certainly wasn't looking forward to that prospect, but Grissom would be with her, there in court and at breakfast. As for the team, she hoped, perhaps naively she knew, that wedding bells might trump the possession of a schizophrenic homicidal parent in the news department.

As for this morning, instead of lingering in bed with her husband and their dog, both of whom by now had probably completely commandeered her side of the bed, Sara found herself, like she had countless times in her nearly fourteen plus years of living and working in Vegas, rapidly dressed, her kit already stowed in her trunk and her on the way to yet another crime scene.

Only this crime - this case - would prove anything but ordinary.

xxxxxxx

Twelve minutes later, Sara pulled up next to the waiting Las Vegas black and white and clambered from her Prius.

As Officer Mitch Mitchell held up the ever-ubiquitous yellow crime scene tape enclosing the scene, Sara greeted him with a knowing shake of the head.

"I see I'm not the only one stuck solo. Details?"

"Leaper," Mitchell replied. He gestured to the other car on the curb where a shaky Marcus Walter sat door open, head in his hands, still in shock. "Security guard found her."

"You check the building?"

"Locked. Kids' been out since Wednesday. No janitorial services either due to the holiday. Security does rounds, but nobody goes in or out."

"So no ready roof access," concluded Sara.

Mitchell concurred. "Nope."

Sara set down her case to scan the building behind him.

"Maybe it's just me, but I don't see any open windows either."

"Not in this weather."

Contrary to popular belief, Las Vegas did get cold. Or at least the locals frequently regarded fifty-degree highs and forty degree lows as such.

Popping the latches to her case, Sara unearthed her camera and began swiftly shooting locator shots before turning her full attention to the body.

"He move her at all?" she asked, indicating with a tilt of the head the still stunned security guard.

"Just to make sure she was dead."

Before touching anything herself, Sara checked, "Coroner's office been by yet?"

Before Mitchell could reply, labored coughing emerged from behind them.

Assistant Medical Examiner David Phillips, atypically well-wrapped in scarf, hat and gloves and looking and sounding utterly miserable, hurriedly gasped an apologetic, "Sorry I'm late."

After a double take at the unexpected sight of Sara Sidle standing there, he gave her pleased, albeit surprised, grin and a far cheerier "Hey, stranger, long time no see," before quickly returning to the business of snapping on his own latex gloves.

While it was in fact stating the obvious, Sara observed, "You're not looking so super, Dave."

"Not feeling so super. Joshua came home from playgroup with a cold on Tuesday."

"And he decided to share the fun with daddy. That was sweet of him," said Sara with a soft commiserating smile of her own.

"Was home sick when the calls started coming in. You were nearest."

"I'm honored." Sara's smile widened. "Remind me to send Amy Betty's chicken soup recipe. Grissom swears by it."

Dave laughed. "I didn't think you were into old wives' tales."

"I'm not," rejoined Sara. "Turns out the science behind the whole thing is actually pretty sound..."

At the sudden way her voice began to trail off towards the end of her reply, Dave turned to her. Sara appeared strangely bemused, which wasn't a look Philips had seen her wear all that often.

"Something wrong?" he asked.

Sara seemed to consider this - the sprawled body - her surroundings - before saying, "Why do I have the feeling we've been here before?"

"Here on campus?" asked Dave. "Between the alcohol, drugs, suicides and accidents, I'd say we're out here at least a few times a year."

Sara shook her head. "No. I mean out here, like this.

"Like you've been here, done that, seen that before."

Déjà vu, promnesia, paramnesia, whatever one wanted to call it, the feeling was definitely disconcerting.

"You know what I mean?" she asked.

Having no answer to this, Dave indicated the body. "Can you help me roll her?"

The leaper finally face up, Sara resumed her photographing, while Dave patted the pockets for ID; finding none.

Thinking aloud, Sara said, "It's wrong. All of it. The location. The clothes. The hair. The piercings. They all scream college student. But -"

Sara brushed back the dark streaked reddish-blonde locks.

"How many college students do you know with crows feet?"

"More people are going back to school these days."

"And the dye -" Sara rubbed several strands of hair between her gloved fingers before bringing them up to her nose. "It's fresh. Almost tacky.

"Besides," Sara motioned to the dark, still zipped to the throat windbreaker. "When was the last time you saw someone put on a jacket and not much else before killing themselves?"

"Never."

Setting down her camera, the better to take in the whole scene at once, Sara continued. "There's no blood. With a fall from any height that would kill you there should be blood.

"No sign of impact or visible trauma either. No sign of anything. Witness just assumed from the body placement that she jumped.

" _Zebras_."

"Zebras?" echoed Dave, his turn to be perplexed.

Sara nodded. "You know how they say 'When you hear hooves, think horses, not zebras'?

"This horse definitely has stripes."


	2. Two: The Spider and the Fly

**Two: The Spider and the Fly**

"Talk about strange," Dave observed, curiously regarding his thermometer. "Body's at thirty-eight degrees."

"That's not possible," Sara protested.

Death, after all, proved to be a fairly regular, predictable process. Maybe not the dying exactly, as that tended to vary considerably from person to person, but the what happened after death followed certain rules and regularities.

Typically algor mortis, the natural cooling of the body post decease, decreased body temperature an average of one and a half degrees an hour until the body reached ambient temperature.

Cooling below ambient temperature just wasn't something bodies did. Not naturally. It was just one of those results of the basic laws of thermodynamics, hence Sara's objection.

Dave extended the device. "See for yourself."

Sara waved the gesture aside. "But that makes absolutely no sense. It's got to be what - at least fifty degrees out here."

Pulling out her phone, she called up the previous hours', days' and weeks' temperatures.

"That's what I thought," she said. "It hasn't dropped below forty once this month."

"So what are you thinking?" Dave asked. "Killed earlier and stored in a freezer?

"Another body dump?"

" _Another_?" echoed Sara. "You mean Catherine's case?"

"I mean three call outs in one morning on a closed campus. What's the chance of that?"

"The question is how likely is it that they're unrelated?" It was Sara's turn to ask.

David Phillips shrugged. It was Vegas after all. Stranger things did - and had - happened.

Leaning closer to the body, Sara sniffed once, then again.

Turning to Dave, she asked, "You wearing cologne?"

To which the assistant medical examiner gave her a thoroughly affronted: "I may be sick, but I'm not stupid."

She gave him an apologetic _I had to ask_ shrug by way of reply.

Then Sara considered another possibility. "Sucking cough drops?"

He shook his head.

Sara wrinkled her nose. "You don't smell that?"

"I can't smell anything."

Then as if it just hit her, she said. "Wait - _Three_ call outs all on campus?"

"Yeah. There's the apparent suicide in the Administrative and Justice Building. Right up the street. You could have practically car-pooled. And -"

"Suicide how?" she asked starting to sound concerned.

Phillips, not grasping the reason for Sara's sudden distress, simply replied, "Dispatch said something about a hanging."

"And Catherine's body dump?"

Dave withdrew his phone to consult the details on the call out. "Naked body in a shower curtain over by the tennis courts. Was on my way there right after here."

Sara counted the cases out on her fingers. "A body in a shower curtain, a leaper and a hanged man?"

"That's what I heard."

She gestured to the "leaper's" jacket. "Dave, can you get the zip?"

The slow rasp practically screamed in the still, empty campus.

Sara goggled at the sight.

"Remember that strange sense of déjà vu earlier?" she asked. "I think I know why.

"And I've got a bad feeling about this. A really bad feeling."

Her own phone back in her hand, she dialed and without preamble or greeting launched in with a brusque, "Greg, you cut your guy down yet?"

From inside the lobby of the Administration and Justice Building, Greg Sanders paused in the midst of shooting overalls to properly take the call.

He answered her with an equally cheered and caught off guard, "Hey, Sara, nice to hear your voice, too." Then getting to her question, he said. "No, we only got here half an hour ago. Still waiting on Dave."

"He's here. You got any pics yet?"

"Yeah."

"Send them."

Greg couldn't remember the last time he'd heard Sara Sidle sounding so urgent, nor could he imagine why she was so intent now.

"You do realize you're not boss anymore, right?" he half joked.

"Just do it," Sara insisted. "Besides, I can already tell you hanging's not your cause of death."

She cut off his protest of "There's no way you can know -" with an imperative: "Get a ladder. I'm getting Catherine on the phone."

Before he could further question, let alone disagree, Sara put him on mute to dial.

Again sans the usual niceties, she began, "Catherine, we've got a problem. You open up your body in the shower curtain yet?"

Sara heard Las Vegas' current lab director Catherine Willows scoff, "Not in this environment."

"What do you know?"

"Not much," Catherine replied.

With the body wrapped up so tight being able to identify it as naked and female had been some work.

"Still waiting on the coroner's office before we attempt a closer look."

"You smell her yet?" Sara asked.

"Smell her?"

"Yeah, what does she smell like?"

"You want us to smell her?" asked Catherine, no less bewildered.

In truth, Willows hadn't thought to check, at least not closely. From where she knelt, the body reeked of new plastic.

Catherine motioned for her daughter Lindsey, the freshly minted CSI Level One, to do as Sara suggested.

Sara, having taken Sanders off hold the moment before, said into her phone, "That goes for you, too, Greg."

With his iPhone haphazardly tucked between ear and shoulder as he attempted to wrestle a ladder into position beneath the hanged man, Greg sighed, "And I thought Grissom was weird."

When Sara pointedly ignored the barb, he turned to Morgan Brody who was staring at him strangely, well more strangely than usual.

In _sotto voce_ , he explained, "Sara wants us to smell him."

This did little to alter the puzzled expression on her face. Neither did his faux gallant, "Ladies first," as he motioned for her to ascend the ladder ahead of him.

"Thanks. A lot," Morgan quipped.

"Well?" Sara asked, growing impatient on her end.

"It's a sort of sickly sweet smell," Morgan observed.

"Like high school biology," Lindsey agreed.

Stopping at the step just beneath Morgan's, Greg, most definitely currently invading her personal space, leant in to take his own cautious, curious sniff.

"Or Grissom's old office," he supplied.

Again avoiding the jab, Sara asked, "Catherine?"

Catherine bent; sniffed.

"Formaldehyde," she replied knowingly.

Of course Sara would recognize _that_ smell.

Sara agreed. "With a hint of phenol."

"Embalming fluid?" asked Lindsey, while Greg countered with a "How did you -" of his own.

By way of reply, Sara uttered a wholly nonchalant, "Women have a better sense of smell than men."

Somehow managing to forget just how highly out numbered he presently was, Greg scoffed, "Yeah right."

" _Psychology Today_ ," said Sara. "I'll make sure to send you a link to the article."

"So," cut in Catherine, trying to keep them all on task, "we aren't looking at a body dump and two suicides."

"We're not even looking at murder," said Sara.

Rising to step away from the "leaper," what proved evident to her abruptly became openly obvious: beneath the victim's jacket and pale pink nightie lay a not so neatly sewn up Y-incision.

"You can't kill a corpse."

After a long silence on all three fronts, Catherine chimed in. "So they're plainly connected. But how?"

"I've got a hunch," answered Sara. "But I need your overalls in order to confirm."

With neither further query nor comment, Catherine hit send on her image files.

As the sight of the naked body fully resolved itself onto the screen of Sara's iPhone, that faint tickle in the back of her head, that itch of familiarity she hadn't been able to quite put her finger on earlier, but knew was there, gave way to chilling realization.

She swore; checked the three scenes again, hoping against hope she had somehow been mistaken.

With a sinking heart, she knew she hadn't.

Sara didn't need her husband's near eidetic memory to register the similarity.

It was familiar, uncannily familiar.

Too familiar.

"They're not just body dumps," she finally said, trying to keep her voice on an even keel. "They're intentionally staged."

Lindsey asked, "A twisted form of _Tableau vivant_?"

"More like _memento mori_ ," said Sara. "'Remember that you must die,'" she translated for the others' benefit.

"But why the show?" questioned Catherine.

Sara shook her head. "I don't have the why, but I have a pretty good idea who."

xxxxxxx

Just after noon, both an official and an unmarked police car pulled up outside of the Starbucks on Paradise Road. Officer Mitchell emerged from the driver's side of the former, while a smartly suit clad Conrad Ecklie exited from the later. Ecklie gave his jacket a nervous tug as he waited for Mitchell to join him.

The two of them nearing the diminutive figure of a young woman sitting alone at one of the outside tables, book in hand, idly sipping a latte, Mitchell murmured, "Barista says she's been here half an hour - forty-five minutes - give or take."

Ecklie nodded. Mitchell's hand hovered over his gun, just in case.

"Hannah West -" Ecklie called.

Slowly, Hannah West turned. She gave the two men an enigmatic smile and an unsurprised and utterly unconcerned, "What can I do for you, Sheriff?"

Ultimately, it was that smile and not the question that unnerved them most.

xxxxxxx

As they headed towards Interrogation, Sara walked Morgan through her evidence, adroitly flipping between the images of the new and previous cases on her iPad.

Unsurprisingly, the similarities proved glaring.

"Copycat?" Morgan asked.

Sara shook her head. "Not a chance.

"While some of the details of Stacy Vollmer's case were released to the press, because Kira Dellinger's murder never made it to trial, those never were.

"Only someone with an intimate knowledge of the crime scenes, someone who was there, would know.

"Except this one -"

Sara pulled up the several shots of the hanged man next to one of Marlon West dead in his jail cell.

"She only ever saw a single photograph."

Before Morgan could even begin to ask how Sara could have possibly known this, Sara supplied, "I was the one who showed her."

"Still," Morgan began, "that's an awful lot for a single person to accomplish. What about a boyfriend? Accomplice?"

"Hannah doesn't need an accomplice," Sara rued. "She's a one woman Moriarty all on her own."

"But why the obvious calling card? If she's so smart, why the rookie move?"

"Because it's not a rookie move. She wanted those bodies found. In fact, she went so far as to guarantee they'd be found."

Morgan nodded.

"I get that killers crave attention, get off on the risk. But it's the _almost_ getting caught that's the thrill. Why set yourself up like that?"

Sara was forced to admit: "Your guess is as good as mine."

xxxxxxx

From inside the observation room of one of Las Vegas Metro's interrogation suites, Catherine Willows and Conrad Ecklie kept a close eye on a quiet Hannah West through the glass.

It was not a reassuring sight.

Despite the fact that all the still slight young woman was doing was sitting serenely, hands folded, patiently and equally placidly waiting, there was something knowing in her off hand demeanor, something knowing and untouchable.

And they knew it. And they knew she knew they knew it.

Ecklie, despite or perhaps in spite of how uneasy Hannah was making them both, attempted to plow on with his briefing.

"We picked her up at the Starbucks over on Paradise Road. Several of the baristas say she's a regular. Same time. Same order. Sits in the same place. Always with a book. Always alone."

"She do anything? Ask to call anyone?" Catherine asked.

"Not even her lawyer. Just sits there, not a care in the world."

"Well, she has been here before."

"As we've got nothing concrete to charge her with," said Ecklie, "she's simply a person of interest. For now."

A sharp rap on the door put an end to any further conversation.

The two stepped outside to find Sara and Morgan waiting to enter the interrogation room. Sara had her hand out for the handle when Ecklie stepped forward to block her.

Mien and tone firm, he said, "There's no way you're going anywhere near that girl."

Sara gaped at him. "You called me in, remember?

"Then I'm the one who makes the connections to the earlier cases and you're pulling me off this case?"

"Not this case. Just this interview," he countered.

"On what grounds?"

"You two have a history."

"Isn't that why you called Grissom in to help with Lady Heather's case," supplied Sara, "because they had a history?"

"We both know -" Ecklie began.

Sara never gave him the chance to finish. "I thought we were long past those _For the good of the lab_ speeches of yours, Conrad."

"It's about the good of the people on this team."

"I can handle her," Sara insisted.

"Like the last time or the time before?"

It was a low blow and Catherine, Ecklie and Sara all knew it; one that stunned Sara into momentary silence. Morgan simply stared.

Catherine quickly stepped in.

"I'm going to have to agree with Conrad on this," she said. "Morgan and I are going to handle this one. We need fresh eyes and a fresh face," she persisted before Sara could protest further.

Sara, sensing any additional arguing to be futile, reluctantly conceded, but not without replying with a terse: "Am I allowed to watch at least?"

Ecklie held the door of the observation room open for her. "I'm sure your insights will prove invaluable as always."

Not entirely mollified, Sara stepped inside.

When Conrad Ecklie joined her a few minutes later, he found Sara standing before the one-way mirror, arms crossed firm across her chest and gaze intently fixed on Hannah West.

Before long, Hannah was joined by Catherine and Morgan.

Hannah turned her cool, collected gaze first on one than the other as each took a seat across from the young wunderkind.

"'"Will you walk into my parlor?" said the Spider to the Fly,'" quietly quipped Ecklie, hoping to lighten the mood.

Sara harrumphed. "Thankfully spider webs only work 20% of the time."

Ecklie was tempted to ask _Grissom?_ by way of her source, but the interrogation was already underway.

Hannah was the first to break the silence. Turning to Morgan she grinned, "You're new."

"Well, I'm old," Catherine replied.

"Yes, I remember. Ms. -" Hannah paused, making a show out of trying to recall her name. " _Willows_ , I believe."

Hannah returned her gaze to Morgan who was beginning to appear unnerved by all the intent attention.

Deciding formal introductions were in order, Catherine said, "And this is C.S.I. Brody. How about we forgo the rest of the usual pleasantries?"

Hannah shrugged herwhatever.

Having regained some of her composure, Morgan began to flip through the file in front of her, reading aloud as she went.

"So, Hannah West. Graduated from high school at twelve. College at fourteen. Post Doc at sixteen. I.Q. off the charts.

"Makes you wonder what you could have accomplished for good."

Hannah refused to rise to the bait. "Am I being accused of something?" she questioned calmly.

Catherine smiled. "We're just talking."

Hannah considered this. "If we're just talking, does that mean I get to ask a question?"

Morgan deferred to Catherine who shrugged. "Why not?"

"If you're in here," began Hannah, "that means she's behind the glass, doesn't it?"

"She who?" Catherine asked.

" _Sara_."

Both Catherine and Morgan had to work to conceal their surprise.

"I think I'd rather talk to her," said Hannah.

It was Catherine's turn for bad cop. "That's not going to happen."

"What? She's busy?" Hannah smirked.

From the other side of the glass, Ecklie murmured, "Cocky little -"

"You have no idea," cut in Sara.

Back in the interrogation room, Hannah leant back. "I've got all day. I doubt you do."

"My schedule's pretty open," countered Catherine. She turned to Morgan. "You?"

Morgan nodded. "I'm good."

"Besides," Catherine offered. "You don't get to pick your criminalist. Departmental policy."

As yet unfazed, Hannah angled in. "I have the feeling you might make an exception in this case."

"And why is that?" Catherine was growing tired of playing games.

"Because -" Hannah replied, her eyes never once leaving the mirror as she reached into her pocket.

Before Catherine could call for assistance, Hannah had placed its contents on the table.

"I have this -" she said.

Her smug, percipient smile remained firmly in place as she withdrew her hand to reveal a simple gold wedding band.

"Get her out of here," barked Catherine. "Now!"

xxxxxxx

In the observation room, Ecklie turned to Sara, his voice tight with concern. "Tell me there's no way that's what I think it is?"

Sara held up her own left hand, all the while not taking her own eyes from the table on the other side of the mirror.

"We got remarried last week," she replied hollowly.

"And he's not back in California or in Paris or someplace else on that boat of his?" The sheriff was starting to sound distinctly distressed now.

When it soon became apparent that Sara wasn't going to or even be able to reply, Greg, who had slipped in unnoticed at the very end of the interview, piped up from behind them: "They've both been back in Vegas since Monday."

While Sara made no indication that she had registered his presence, Ecklie turned to Greg. "Get him on the phone."

Greg looked from the sheriff to Sara, as if to indicate he would if he could, only he couldn't, it having been quite some time since he'd last had Gil Grissom's cell number in his contact list.

Realizing this, Ecklie rested a gentle hand on her arm.

"Sara -"

Sara simply stared.

"Your phone -"

Without removing her gaze from the glass, Sara mechanically retrieved her own cell, thumbed it open.

"Keep her line free. Just in case," Ecklie insisted as Greg took it.

Greg clicked and scrolled several times, then copied over the number to his own phone before returning Sara's to her as yet still open palm. He dialed.

It rang.

And rang.

And rang.

Not that Sara seemed to notice, suddenly deaf and utterly oblivious to anything as she currently was, anything other than watching Morgan retrieve the ring with the tip of a pen and carefully place it into an evidence bag. Catherine was already absent, presumably to check that Hannah was placed in appropriate custody.

"No answer," reported Greg. "Just voicemail."

"Keep trying," Ecklie ordered. "We'll have Archie initiate a trace on his cell. Screw the AG waiver. We can look stupid and apologize later if we have to."

Greg nodded and set about to redial. Ecklie turned and was about to leave to hit up the lab's resident AV tech when Morgan entered, red-taped evidence bag in hand.

Both stopped dead in their tracks at the openly horrified look that came over Sara's face.

Part of her refused any thought that it could be - _it just couldn't be_ \- while another part of her didn't want anything to do with that bag and its contents.

Suddenly, Sara couldn't fight that horribly sick sensation that had started clawing at her insides the minute Hannah had removed her hand. She knew she was going to be sick. There was no containing it.

But not here. Not now.

Sans explanation, sans a single word, she dashed from the room and down the hall, trying to walk, not run, her way to the nearest restroom.

Greg hurried after her. Ecklie snagged his arm.

"Let her go."

The three of them watched her attempt to wend her way through the busy hall as Sara struggled to text on her phone one handed.

Even if Grissom ignored his cell due to preoccupation, which he was, Sara knew, frequently wont to do, she knew, too, that there was no way he would ignore a 911 page.

That is unless he didn't have his cell on him - or had turned it off. But while he had been somewhat absentminded about keeping it on in Paris, he knew better than to be equally laissez-faire about carrying it in Vegas.

While Sara attempted to text, Greg kept dialing. Ecklie turned to Morgan and snagging the evidence bag from her, instructed, "I want you, Greg and Lindsey over at their place.

"Take a couple of uniforms with you. Health and welfare check, whatever. Just don't take any chances."

Morgan nodded. Greg followed.

Ecklie stared down at the simple gold band for a long moment before going after Sara himself.

xxxxxxx

In the Women's Room, Sara leaned heavily against the washbasin, shoulders slumped and head hung low, willing her rebellious stomach, her thudding heart and breathless lungs back into normality again.

Failing at this, she let out a long hard exhale before splashing ice cold water onto her face.

As she lifted her still dripping head from the sink, she found a wad of paper towels already extended to her. Wordlessly, she took them.

Conrad Ecklie next handed her a small plastic cup.

"Drink it."

In a rare bout of acquiescence, Sara actually did as she was told.

Finding the tepid tap water bitter in her mouth after the vomit, she couldn't help but make a face.

"Don't have anything stronger?" she asked.

"Not at the office."

 _Pity._

Taking the time to continue to try to gather herself, Sara obediently sipped.

After a minute and in part to cover her own embarrassment, she asked, "Your constituents know you like to frequent women's bathrooms?"

Ecklie shrugged. "Sheriff's prerogative."

He gave her the chance to muster a bit more of her bearings before asking what he had come to ask.

"Sara, I'm sorry but I have to -"

Sara waived the apology away.

She took another deep breath, then the proffered bag. She turned the ring in her hands, the better to read the engraving along the inside:

 _Love always to my one and only_

Only three people in the world knew the sentiment Sara had chosen to have inscribed on her husband's wedding band in honor of their second marriage: him, herself and the San Franciscan engraver.

They were personal, private, meant only for his eyes, those words, as what he'd had engraved on her band had been for her.

That it was public - that Hannah possessed this intimate thing - sent a shiver down Sara's spine.

Ultimately, she nodded in reply to Ecklie's question. "It's his."

Then even more quietly she added, "It means she's serious."

Sara reached for her phone.

In all her hurry and distress, she'd never managed to hit send on her 911 text to her husband.

"We've already tried," Ecklie told her. "No answer. Greg, Morgan and Lindsey are on their way to your place now."

They stood there silent in the restroom for a long while, neither knowing what to say next until Ecklie's phone let out a lusty peal, startling them both back to life again.

"I'm putting you on speaker," Ecklie answered. "Sara's here. What did you find, Greg?"

Greg's tinny voice echoed. "No one's home."

"You sure?" asked Ecklie.

"We're inside. Door was open."

"Unlocked?" Sara said surprised.

"No. Ajar."

Both Ecklie and Sara exchanged worried looks.

 _This was not good._

"I'll see if I can get the phone company to put a rush on that trace for his phone," offered Ecklie, if only for there to be something immediate he could do.

"That's not going to be necessary," said Greg.

"Why is that?"

Greg's reply reverberated in the tiled space:

"Because I'm looking right at it."


	3. Three: Can You Find Me Now

**Three: Can You Find Me Now?**

From over speakerphone Conrad Ecklie insisted: "Don't touch anything until Catherine and Sara get there."

Morgan agreed, "We'll go out. Knock on a few doors. See if the neighbors saw or heard anything."

Greg clicked off the phone, slipped it back into its holster as he, Morgan and Lindsey all headed for the door.

Lindsey was the one who broke the uneasy silence first. "I understand how this is personal for Sara, but not Hannah," she said.

Greg considered for a moment as if working out the best way to summarize the story.

"In 2006," he began, "groundskeepers found a body in a flowerbed at the local high school. We traced the victim back to the locker room showers and found traces of sodium in the shower head."

"Explosion?" Lindsey asked, knowing all to well that while sodium chloride and water mixed all the time to form harmless sea water, elemental sodium and water proved to be anything but harmless when forced to interact.

Greg nodded. "Victim freaked. Took a header down the stairs. Case was originally pegged as a prank gone wrong."

"That's some prank," said Morgan.

"But before long it starts to look like murder," said Greg. "The premeditated kind.

"And Marlon West's got a known beef with the victim. A big one. The case against him looks solid until trial when little sister Hannah gets up on the stand, bloody shirt and all, and confesses to killing Stacie herself."

"And muddies the water," sighed Lindsey.

"Ultimately, we can't prove which one did it. Enter reasonable doubt and -"

"Marlon walks," finished Morgan.

"Exactly," nodded Greg. "Then two years later Marlon's college girlfriend - recently _ex_ -girlfriend - ends up shoved out her dorm room window.

"Marlon looks good for that one too. A little too good. Turns out this time he really is innocent. But rather than go to jail -"

"Marlon hangs himself," Morgan concluded.

"Hence the body in the shower curtain, the leaper and the hanged man," summarized Lindsey. "But why take Mr. Grissom?"

Greg's tone turned grave. "Sara broke the news."

This reply only seemed to further confuse the neophyte C.S.I.. "So blame the messenger?" she asked.

Having no answer to this, Greg shrugged.

Lindsey shook her head. "You'd think after all that, Hannah would have gotten as far away from here as she could."

"Probably couldn't leave Marlon," suggested Sanders. "They were outcasts together. Until they weren't.

"Besides, no matter where she went the story would eventually get around."

"I don't know," began Morgan. "Hannah was never tried. Underage at the time anyway. Any files were probably sealed.

"Lots of things don't turn up on random background checks. You'd be surprised at the sorts of skeletons coworkers can have buried in their closets and no one ever suspects a thing."

xxxxxxx

From the driver's seat of one of the lab's Denali Yukons, Catherine Willows considered best how to comfort her friend. At the moment, Sara Sidle sat still and silent and staring out the window, utterly lost, in what - thought - memories - fear - Catherine didn't know. Only that from Sara's tight lipped expression, whatever it was, it couldn't be good.

Ultimately, she opted to acknowledge the elephant in the SUV.

"So, Hannah West," said Catherine, "didn't think we'd see her again."

Sara roused a little at this. "Was hoping we wouldn't. Honestly, I haven't given her a heck of a lot of thought. Not for a few years anyway. Things have been..."

"A little busy," Catherine concluded.

"Yeah."

So Sara had let Hannah be, left her to her own devices, not bothered to check up or keep tabs on her as she had previously done as she really had been too busy with other things: work, life, marriage, divorce, remarriage.

But apparently leaving Hannah alone hadn't prevented the young woman from scheming, plotting, planning and now taking.

"But," Sara said sadly, "I have the feeling she hasn't stopped thinking about it."

"Or you -"

Sara let out a long held breath. "She's had nothing but time - And rage."

"And that's a dangerous combination," Catherine agreed. "But why take Grissom if she blames you?"

Unlike Greg, Sara knew exactly why.

"Revenge by proxy," Sara surmised. "Wouldn't be the first time. And I know exactly where she got the idea.

"And it wasn't from Stephen King. _Natalie_. Natalie Davis."

The mere mention of Natalie Davis caused every muscle in Catherine's hands to contract on the steering wheel. The various miniature killings had been bad enough when they'd been strangers featured in Davis' sick and twisted tiny tableaus. Once it had become Sara under that car, when Grissom had in front of all of them declared with all certainty that he knew why Natalie had taken Sara, that it was because the girl held him responsible for the death of Ernie Dell, the only person Natalie had ever loved, and as Grissom had taken Dell from her, Natalie was going to do the same thing to Grissom now, in that moment, Catherine's heart had stopped.

She would never forget that look on Gil Grissom's face once he had worked it all out. Never. Nor the fear when they finally found Sara out in the desert.

No, Catherine wasn't about to forget Natalie Davis.

"Hannah knew all about her," Sara was saying. "Told me so herself."

And even now years later, Sara could hear plain as day, the young woman's mock concerned taunting tone: "I think I know why you're so angry, Sara. I did some research. I read about what that serial killer did to you out in the desert, under that car. It must have been so terrible being trapped like that all alone..."

Then Hannah hadn't been able to keep the curiosity from her "Did your life flash in front of your eyes?" Her subsequent "You must have been so sad knowing you were going to lose everyone who mattered to you" rang as false as anything that ever came from Hannah West's mouth.

"But why now after all these years?" asked Catherine. "It's been what - almost eight years now?"

"Eight years and two weeks... Almost to the day," said Sara doing the math in her head.

"What set her off?"

Sara sighed. "She was never off. She just waited. For just the right moment.

"As for now - Perfect storm of opportunity. School was out. Grissom here. She couldn't resist."

"So his being away - the divorce - "

"Kept him safe."

xxxxxxx

In the hallway outside her - and now Grissom's - Vegas apartment, Sara passed a grave faced uniform whom she didn't recognize, but who somehow recognized her, as she ducked under the glaring crime scene tape cordoning off her own front door.

Unfortunately, the expression Greg greeted her with inside proved even graver.

Catherine in her usual ever-officious way, cut straight to the point. "Neighbors?" she asked.

"Nothing so far," said Greg. "Lindsey and Morgan are finishing up the last of the interviews now."

"They probably won't get anything," Sara cut in. "Most of the building aren't even home during the day. It's part of the reason I picked the place."

Reluctantly Catherine had to admit this was probably the case.

Turning her attention to Sara, she asked, "Anything you can tell us? Anything out of place?"

Much of the apartment was at the moment, Sara having taken advantage of the two plus weeks she was scheduled to be back in Vegas to, when not occupied with the Deputy D.A. or reviewing case files and evidence, to begin to pack up her apartment.

With Grissom back beside her again to help and the packing having proved far more pleasant than when she had hastily - and angrily - shoved her possessions into boxes to move out of the house they had once shared, by now her place was more square cubes of cardboard than not.

Neatly taped and labeled stacks towered along one free wall behind an equally tidy collection of stacked newsprint, while unassembled boxes rested against the filled. Even the little islands of half packed ones didn't disrupt the space. Despite being in the midst of moving, Sara Sidle didn't do messy.

Which all meant the space looked even more Spartan than it had when she had occupied it on her own, which was indeed saying something. After the townhouse, she had settled on a simple one bedroom, sparsely decorated, apartment. Too hurt and heartbroken, as well as swamped with all her usual work, Sara just couldn't be bothered to do much more. She didn't see the point in any case.

Particularly as Sara had as she had for much of the decade before tended to avoid being home as much as possible. Mostly she'd just slept there - when she managed to sleep.

And sleep didn't require all that many mementos.

Anyway, too many things she'd owned had held far too many memories for her to want to keep them on display. She had kept them though, in their own neatly labeled boxes in a temperature controlled storage facility off Blue Diamond Road. Considering the already cramped quarters of the _Ishmael,_ much of what her apartment currently contained was destined to join her other things there.

However unhappy she had been there up until the last week or so, the apartment was after all, still her home, but Sara knew she didn't possess the luxury of regarding it as such now.

She tried to view the place objectively, as if with a stranger's eyes. As if it were just another crime scene and Grissom was just another vic-

Except Sara couldn't even finish the word, let alone that thought.

Still, she had to try.

With another deep breath, she stepped forward, began mentally taking snapshots.

No keys in the dish by the door where she - _they_ \- always kept them.

On the kitchen counter, the new toaster she had bought specifically for Grissom's preferred breakfast of toast and fruit, gleamed, unplugged, cold and crumb-less.

And while the faint whiff of coffee still perfumed the air, the pot had been emptied down to dregs.

 _So coffee, yes. Breakfast, no._

The paper she had laid out for him while waiting that morning for her own coffee to brew was notably absent, as were his favorite pen and his current pair of reading glasses. Not that the latter meant much. Grissom, who never misplaced anything, was always misplacing his spectacles.

All this time, Sara assiduously avoided lingering over the one thing that was definitely out of place: Grissom's phone placed in the center of the breakfast bar.

And yet, she couldn't.

While it really was the only odd thing about any of it, it was also the one thing Sara didn't want to have to deal with, not quite yet.

Instead, she let her focus settle on the diminutive plant at the far end of the counter, placed now closest to the window, the better to capture any natural light.

Of course that hadn't been where she had found it a few days before when she had wearily dragged herself through the door after a too long day spent with the Deputy District Attorney discussing the Freeman case. Then the arrangement had sat on the edge nearest to the door, a small white envelope of the sort that came with floral deliveries propped against the bit of bark, the plant itself, an epiphytic miniature, not kept in a conventional pot.

Sara leaned in now as she had that day, the better to take in the Lilliputian purple blossoms, an even dozen freckled-lipped, yellow-centered flowers, each smaller than a pinkie nail and no thicker than two quarters stacked atop each other, marking each inflorescence. With each leaf barely topping out at an inch and a half, the entire arrangement could comfortably fit in the palm of her hand.

What had surprised her then was the light, green, faintly aquatic scent the efflorescence gave off. Orchids as a rule seldom had any odor, possessing other potent ways to attract potential pollinators.

"They're supposed to smell," Grissom had piped up behind her. "Hence its scientific and common names: _Schoenorchis fragrans_ or fragrant Schoenorchis."

Apparently her husband had first encountered the orchid species while in Thailand at an entomology conference several years back and upon seeing them again in a Vegas flower shop, found he couldn't resist bring the plant home.

"It just seemed strange, you without your vegetation," had been his only explanation.

No more strange _,_ the present Sara rued, than having to wade through her place like a crime scene.

Then her gaze came to rest on two slips of paper off to the side, left she knew from the night before.

All too soon, the people she had known and had worked with for years, more than a decade, would go through the place, her place, their place, documenting every detail of their physical lives. And Sara was okay with that. They could sort through their trash, fluoresce their sheets, rummage through every drawer, paw through every closet, cover every last inch in fingerprint powder, she didn't care, not if it got Grissom back.

But not those two slips.

Under the cover of checking to make sure the plant still had plenty of moisture, Sara angled in, and contrary to every well-known evidence collection protocol, deftly swept the papers into her hand, then into her pants pocket.

For comfort, she assured herself.

"It was a gift," Sara supplied, indicating the plant.

Neither Catherine nor Greg needed to ask whom from. From the sad, fond way Sara regarded it, they knew.

Yes, ultimately the only thing odd in the entire space was Grissom's phone, prominently placed where you wouldn't miss it.

"We haven't touched it," said Greg, noticing her gaze. "Were waiting for you."

"You shoot it already?" Sara asked.

"Yeah."

Still not yet ready to deal with it and as yet trying her best to avoid the ultimately unavoidable, Sara returned to Catherine's initial query.

"Keys are missing. Crossword section gone," she said. "Any sign of Hank?"

For both lead and dog, like his master, were missing.

Greg shook his head.

Withdrawing her own phone, Sara flipped through her contacts and dialed, hoping against hope, that when the other party picked up, her voice would prove light, calm and even.

With a false cheeriness she addressed the phone. "Hi, Robin? It's Sara. Gil drop off Hank with you this morning?"

Sara having listened intently to the reply on the other end, offered their longstanding dog sitter a far too flippant, "No, no, nothing to worry about. Just a miscommunication -

"Yeah, I know - Nothing new. Thanks."

"Didn't drop Hank off at the sitter's?" Greg asked once Sara had disconnected.

"No."

Catherine chimed in. "Anywhere they might regularly go -"

It was a fair question, Sara reasoned. Whether by necessity or by choice, people tended to be creatures of habit. Some more so than others. And if anyone was a creature of habit, Gil Grissom was.

Grissom, she well knew found the regular rituals soothing, knew, too, they frequently provided some small measure of control and sanity to a world sorely lacking in either.

The only problem with habits: they made you predictable. And predators thrived on the predictable.

 _Damn,_ Sara silently cursed herself. They should have known better. But you couldn't live your entire life constantly looking back over your shoulder. Sara had done that for far too long and it was, she knew, no way to live.

Only predictability turned out to be an equally dangerous way to die.

"We go for walks," Sara eventually replied, hastily shoving that thought aside. "There's a park, about three quarters of a mile from here. We've been taking Hank there.

"Sometimes we stop and sit for a while if the weather's nice. In the morning, we do the crossword. The walk and fresh air's good for thinking."

Sara thought it much more likely that after all his time out on the open ocean, Grissom wasn't all that keen on being cooped up inside all day.

"Or so he says," she finished.

Catherine turned to Greg. "You and Lindsey check it out. Tell Morgan I need her in here with me."

Greg nodded and without further comment, went.

Just as she was about to pose her next question, Catherine's phone let out an insistent text buzz. She hurriedly examined the message.

"Ecklie. Wants to know if you've got a recent pic handy. For the B.O.L.O. -

"We could always use the ID picture the lab still has on file but -"

"It's a little out of date," agreed Sara, which would defeat the entire purpose of said Be on the look out.

Intent on her own phone, Sara opened the Photos files, began swiping through her saved images.

The sudden sight of Grissom on the screen gave her a momentary pause, but she forced a calming breath and herself to continue.

Again, she tried to be objective, hard as it was not to regard the photographs as memories she was holding in her hands.

There was Grissom in that straw hat of his - the one she could never and would never she knew manage to get him to part with, no matter how battered and worn the thing got - standing on the deck of the _Ishmael_ proudly holding a 36 inch, 76 pound _Thunnus alalunga_ , or Pacific albacore tuna aloft, evidence, as he strenuously maintained, that yes, he could indeed catch a fish. Butcher, clean and cook it, too, though thankfully there weren't any photos of that.

In the next, Grissom in suit and tie and Sara in a blue swirl of a dress stood smiling beneath the starry ceiling of _la chapelle inférieure de La Sainte Chapelle_. Several more featured the two of them in various _repaires parisiens._

Then a snapshot of the three of them at the beach: Hank tugging at the leash, wanting far more to chase after sea birds than pose for family pictures. But the light, Sara rued, wasn't quite right.

The next image however proved perfect. But then it had been one of those rare perfect moments when it had been taken.

She and Grissom had on the day before their impromptu wedding been strolling through San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, having left Hank to the pleasures of his perennial mid-afternoon nap - and bed hogging.

The two of them, picnicking and simply enjoying the day out and about and wrapped up as they had been in each other, had been equally mostly oblivious to the rest of the tourists until Grissom had strolled up to a trio of cellphone toting Japanese and offered to take a picture of the three of them together.

In slightly shy, but eager barely broken English, the group had eagerly and appreciatively agreed, then offered to do the same in return. Which was what, Sara had then realized, Grissom had been counting on.

It was time for a new picture.

So the two had stood, bright-eyed and beaming, with the vast orange vermillion span of the Golden Gate Bridge behind them and grinned even wider at their photographer's insistent cry of "Chiizu!"

After adding their own hearty _arigatous_ to the other tourists', they had set about resuming their stroll, only pausing for a moment for Grissom to review the image.

When he had lingered a little too long, Sara had asked, "What? What is it?"

He offered the photo to her. "You really are even more beautiful then when we first met," he said.

Sara doubted it. Not his sincerity exactly, just that he could be in any way unbiased.

When she had intimated as much to him, Grissom replied, "Beauty is in the brain of the beholder.

"The eye may perceive, but only the brain can recognize true beauty when it sees it."

Sara would have asked when he had become such an avid katologist, but she already had a pretty good idea of his answer.

It was after all, the answer he had given her once to a somewhat similar question posed more than a decade before: _Since I met you._

"Sara?" Catherine's gentle voice startled Sara back into the present and back into action.

With well-practiced deftness, she set to crop herself from the photo and sent the revised image off in an email.

"Should be in his inbox now," said Sara. "Pic's only a little more than a week old."

Neither able to ignore Grissom's phone any longer, Catherine passed Sara a pair of latex gloves.

"It look staged to you?" she asked.

"It is," Sara agreed, snapping on her gloves. This being the first time she'd ever donned a pair in her own apartment before, the familiar action felt faintly foreign. Not to mention unnecessary.

Her fingerprints were already everywhere, but there was no point further contaminating any evidence. If they found any evidence. This being Hannah's show, Sara rather doubted they'd find much, if any.

"But we're not going to find any prints." She gingerly lifted the phone up about the edges as she examined it intently. "Not even partials. And no smudges.

"It's plainly been wiped. No one can keep an iPhone screen that clean."

"You know his passcode?" Catherine asked as they thumbed the screen on.

Confidently, Sara typed 0-2-1-9-9-8.

While the numbers appeared random to Catherine, Sara explained, "Month and year we first met."

But before she could investigate its contents any further, the phone let out a loud persistent insect-like chirp, startling them both.

The caller ID came up UNKNOWN CALLER.

Sara looked to Catherine, her eyes asking: _Answer or let it go to voice mail?_

"Answer," replied Catherine.

Sara did, careful not to hold the receiver too close to her face.

She let out a shaky "Hello?" before swiftly shifting into a still slightly uneasy French.

" _Bonjour, M. Morel - Non, non, nid tout va bien - Gil n'est pas ici en ce moment. Puis-je prendre un message?"_

While not wishing to be rude, yet knowing she needed to get off the phone and fast, Sara tried to expedite the conversation as best as she could.

" _Oui - Oui - Je vais devoir lui que vous appelez la première chose quand il obtient le po."_

The last Gallic syllable hung there in the air for what felt like a very long time before Sara supplied, "Old Sorbonne colleague."

Catherine was still staring. "Crickets?" she asked after a while.

Sara shrugged. "It seemed apropos."

Noticing a text message notification in the top banner, Sara clicked.

And nearly dropped the phone.

"What -" Catherine began, then cut her own self off short at the sight of the five-word text:

 _Find me if you can_

Catherine spun to Morgan, who had only moments before slipped inside to join them. "Get Ecklie on the phone. Have them see if Hannah's still got a phone on her."

"She doesn't," Morgan replied. "They checked before she went in for questioning. Which was odd. I mean who doesn't carry a cell?"

Not having an answer to this, Catherine said, "She probably used a disposable. We'll have Archie track the number anyway."

"Don't bother," interjected Sara. "The number's mine."

Sara indicated her name above the blue message bubble.

"Except I didn't send it."

She passed over her own phone.

"See for yourself," Sara insisted. "Passcode's 1-1-2-0-1-5. Our wedding anniversary. The second time. A week ago... Today..."

Her voice trailed off at the realization.

Catherine and Morgan were too intent on scrolling through Sara's texts.

 **Sara**

 **Today** 7:17 AM

Got called in.

Haven't forgotten

I owe you breakfast.

48 Across yomammajoke

Love you.

 **Grissom**

 **Today** 7:34 AM

I figured. That's what you

get for volunteering. Don't

forget dinner 8:30. Mom.

Always. Be safe.

Then nothing.

"I never got the chance to text him back," said Sara.

In fact, this was the first time she'd even seen his reply.

"Looks like Hannah decided to go apple picking," Morgan said, "cyber style. Phone clone. No way you'd ever know. And not that hard to do."

"Particularly if Hodges can manage it," Catherine agreed.

Only Sara wasn't listening.

Her eyes lingered over the last two words of his message: _Be safe_.

The familiar sentiment tugged at Sara's heart; twitched her lips into a bittersweet half smile. Over the years, she and Grissom had, knowing as they each did how dangerous the job could be, frequently expressed those exact words via phone, email, text, with a kiss as the other one headed out the door.

Except Sara hadn't proven the one in danger that day.

It was only then she took in the rest of the message.

At the _Don't forget dinner 8:30. Mom_ , all warmth and fondness left Sara's features.

 _Dinner. Betty. Tonight._

They were supposed to have dinner with Grissom's mother. Sara hadn't forgotten exactly, but with everything that had happened that morning, it had honestly slipped her mind.

In truth, Sara had actually been looking forward to it, seeing Betty Grissom again, even if Sara's signing was beyond rusty at this point, no matter how much her husband tried to reassure her to the contrary.

That didn't mean Sara was ready to face Betty and her inevitable questions at the moment, particularly when she didn't even have any answers for herself.

Sara let out a low moan. "Oh, God, Betty. What am I going to tell Betty?" she muttered to herself.

"Too bad Nick's not here. She likes Nick. Or maybe Hodges can..."

Then Sara met Catherine's concerned gaze. "You could tell her," she maintained.

There was no way in hell Catherine was going to have any part of that. In her experience, dealing with one Grissom at a time was way more than plenty. Not that she could say as much to Sara.

Instead, in a quiet, attempting to be comforting voice Catherine suggested, "Why don't we wait to call her until we have some actual news."

For once, Sara was in immediate and complete agreement.

Besides, having to tell her yet again mother-in-law would make all of whatever all this was even more real than Sara was really ready to handle at the moment.

"For now -" Catherine attempted to catch Sara's fleeting attention. "You or Grissom's phone ever go missing?"

Sara shook her head. "His phone and number are new. We bought it together right before we left for Paris last month. Better reception.

"That and time he rejoined the Twenty-first Century again."

Plus, Sara really had wanted to ensure there would be no more missed calls.

"And yours?" Catherine asked. "You go anywhere where you don't keep your phone on you?"

Sara ran her fingers through her hair, frustrated with the seemingly unending litany of questions, yet knowing all too well that the devil really was in the details.

She took another deep, steadying breath; considered it. She seldom was without her phone, even kept it by her bed at night. Always carried it on her at work.

Except -

"The gym, maybe. Yoga class. A couple of times a week when I could get the time off. But it was always kept locked in a locker."

Of course they all knew how little a lock would deter someone with a 177 I.Q..

Then Sara realized something, something that had been nudging at the back of her mind for a while now.

"That's how she knew I'd be here," she said. "I texted Conrad to let him know I'd be in town for the Freeman trial. Told him to call me if the lab ended up short. _When_ the lab ended up short," she hastily amended. Sara couldn't remember the last time they hadn't been shorthanded. "So Hannah ensured the lab would be short."

"Hence the three body dumps," Morgan concluded.

Sara nodded.

Catherine let out a long frustrated sigh, "That still doesn't get us anywhere. The phones are a dead end."

 _Perhaps they weren't_ , thought Sara.

As Catherine had commandeered her phone, she turned to Morgan.

"Can you get Archie on the line?" she asked.

As Sara set about unearthing her laptop bag from under a stack of file folders, Morgan stepped aside to make the call. Catherine simply waited for one of them to explain.

Which Sara did as her computer booted up.

"A few years back, more than a few, now that I think about it, there was this huge uproar over smartphones collecting user location data even when the phones weren't in active use.

"The phone companies maintained it helped them provide better service, while users claimed invasion of privacy. Eventually, phone makers had to provide the option to turn off the data collection."

Catherine, starting to see where Sara might be headed with this, said, "And you're thinking Grissom didn't."

"I know he didn't. I set up the locator service for him myself. So he could tag photos of poachers and poaching activity. For evidence."

Catherine shook her head. Even after all these years, the man still relied on following the evidence.

Perhaps that fact might help them now.

"Only we don't have time to run the phone back to the lab, so I'm hoping Archie knows of a way to pull up the data remotely."

Morgan set her phone down next to Sara's open laptop.

"Hey, Sara," came Archie Johnson's voice over the speaker. "Morgan's been filling me in. You got a lightening cable and access to a computer on your end?"

"Already plugged in and set up."

"I'll walk you through the process. Shouldn't take too long."

This time Catherine's phone rang. Not wanting to disturb Archie and Sara's work with her own conversation, she stepped aside. Not that it ultimately made any difference, as her voice went up several decibels as the call continued.

"I want that place cordoned off and treated like a crime scene!" she concluded.

Sara slammed her laptop shut.

"Got it!" she exclaimed no less loudly.

Her call ended, Catherine cut in. "They found Hank -"

"At the park," Sara finished and Catherine nodded.

This tallied with Grissom's cellphone location data.

"Is Hank -"

Catherine rushed to reassure her. "A little groggy, but okay. Except -"

Sara waited for the other half of that except.

Catherine's voice turned tender. "Except he won't leave. It's... It's like he's..."

"Like he's waiting for him to come back," finished Sara.

"Yeah."

Both women took a moment. Each needed it.

With a deep breath, Catherine began. "I'll take you to the park," she said to Sara. Then to Morgan: "While you get started here."

At this, Morgan popped open her scene case and silently set to work.

Catherine returned her attention to Sara, "Sara, I know you want to get there as soon as possible. But can you give me a few more minutes while we're here?"

Although itching to go, Sara nodded her agreement. Nor had it entirely escaped her attention that Catherine had unconsciously slipped into her ever ubiquitous _talking to the family_ mode.

"Let's start back at the beginning. You and Grissom have been back in town since -"


	4. Four: On the Home Front

**Four: On the Home Front**

"You and Grissom have been back in town since -" Catherine Willows' voice trailed off expectantly.

"Monday," Sara replied, steeling herself for the inevitable twenty questions she knew were to come.

Not that it all wasn't all routine; nothing she hadn't done herself hundreds if not more times over the years.

Still, she never had liked being on the answering end of the questioning, even if she knew its value. But they had to start somewhere.

"Flew out of SFO early that morning," she added. "Flight got in late. We took a cab to the lab - so he could pick up the car. Barely made it just in time for my ten a.m. strategy meeting with Andrea Yeager."

"Deputy District Attorney in charge of the Freeman trial -"

"Yeah."

That was what Sara was doing back in Vegas in the first place: to serve as the principal investigator for the prosecution in a particularly nasty high profile rape case. Rape cases as a general rule didn't usually garner all that much media coverage. Being all too common an occurrence on campuses across America, a seventeen year old being assaulted at a college post-game party sadly wasn't news. That she had been drugged, alcohol alone apparently not enough to render Megan Freeman pliant enough, interested few either. That she had been repeatedly violated with a used beer bottle didn't make a story either. It was what they had done to the rest of her body that had finally captured the media's fickle attentions.

Whether inflicted before, during or after the actual rape, investigators were never able to properly ascertain, only that when Freeman was discovered just before dawn collapsed in one of her own dorm's showers, she was found covered in indelible ink, every last inch of her Sharpie tattooed with every vile and vulgar slur ever invented to denigrate women.

It was enough to make you sick. It certainly had Sara.

Except that hadn't been the end of it either.

As if what they'd done was just another point of pride, the two players had publicly posted pictures of Freeman sprawled naked and freshly adorned as part of their virtual Snapchat bitch book.

That Megan had seen the pictures was certain. When her phone was found, it opened directly to those pics. Social Media being what it was, that much of the rest of the campus had seen them was equally certain.

Openly shamed and humiliated and unable to wash the boys' foul words from her skin, Megan Freeman slit her arms from wrists to elbows with a broken mirror shard. Having passed out from the blood loss, she ultimately drowned in less than six inches of water.

The Media labeled it the Graffiti Case, Sara insisted on calling it the Freeman Case, Megan deserved that at the very least.

With Finn dead, Russell having to recuse himself from the original investigation due to his personal affiliation with the team and Greg and Morgan having been busy off on other cases, that had only left Sara to tell Megan Freeman's tale.

It didn't help that one of the accused had a wealthy, highly connected father who could afford to purchase the best defense money could buy.

Thankfully, Grissom had understood Sara's need to return. Even if it meant leaving right in the middle of shark study season, he'd readily handed over the keys to the _Ishmael_ to their fellow researchers and followed Sara back to Vegas. Only Hank had protested having to be corralled into a crate for the flight.

"Jury selection begins on the first," Sara added.

While testimony was scheduled to commence the day after the jury was set, with such a high profile case, _voir dire_ alone could take days, if not most of the week. If Yeager stuck to her case strategy and the defense didn't needlessly prolong every cross examination, Sara's own testimony wasn't to come until the start of the second day and would, she knew, take the better part of that day to lay out the evidence, detail its collection, to dot every "I" and cross every "T," to make sure the two cocky ballplayers didn't worm their way out of justice.

Sara, too, would stay on as a potential rebuttal witness for when the defense set out to destroy the prosecution's case - and Megan Freeman's memory.

Only in rape cases did the victim end up on trial as much, as if not more, than the accused.

Needless to say, it was going to be a long two, maybe even three weeks. And definitely not how Sara would have chosen to spend her second honeymoon.

Catherine prompted. "You were in again on Tuesday and Wednesday -"

Sara nodded. "All day. Left him to his own devices."

Grissom hadn't grumbled. Instead, he'd assured his wife he had plenty to keep him occupied. Apparently, even oceanic vigilantes still had to complete paperwork. Plus, there had been a few post Paris conference papers he had offered to peer review.

Not that he had stayed home all day either.

"He went out. Did some shopping. I'm not entirely sure where. Groceries - That sort of thing.

"I know he went to see Eli after school on Wednesday."

Catherine's face softened a little at the mention of Warrick Brown's son.

"Told me he was growing like a weed," Sara continued with a sad sort of smile. "And looking more like his father everyday."

The two women were both a little somber for a moment. Seven years may have come and gone, but a loss was still a loss and losing Warrick the way they had, had hit everyone hard.

"He brought Eli a chemistry kit," Sara eventually added, causing Catherine to quip, "The Grissom gift of choice."

Sara returned to her timeline. "He was home before I finally finished up with Andrea."

In the midst of folding the last of the laundry, Sara recalled, but did not say, seriously doubting that any of his erstwhile coworkers ever imagined Gil Grissom doing anything as domestic as folding clean clothes. But he did.

Catherine's next words were more observation than question:

"And he came in with you yesterday."

"Fresh eyes," Sara explained.

True, her husband had offered to come in with her that morning to play devil's advocate and help find the gaps the defense might attempt to exploit.

Only that hadn't been the sole reason.

The reason she had come home late from her meeting with the Deputy D.A., why what should have been a simple status conference had run long, was the disturbing news that the Defense had been digging.

This didn't surprise Sara. When you couldn't go after the evidence, you went after the people who collected the evidence. Defense 101.

Sara already figured there would be questions about her work record, her absences and returns. What she hadn't counted on was the boys' cutthroat defense attorney nosing out what had happened one horrible night thirty years before.

Murderous schizophrenic mothers could prove more than a little difficult to explain on the stand.

So apart from the practical help, for which even with him retired for the better part of the last six years there were still few people in the field he couldn't outthink, Grissom had come in for much needed moral support. Something Sara hadn't realized or truly appreciated until they were back in her apartment admittedly late at the end of a very long day.

That his presence hadn't gone entirely unnoticed, didn't come as a surprise. The lab was stocked full of perfectly qualified investigators after all.

The only reason she and Grissom had opted not to disturb Catherine, having found the recently made lab director currently entrenched in Grissom's old, Sara's once, and now Catherine's current office, was when they had passed her door, it was to find Catherine Willows hunched over her desk in the midst of that most dreaded of all managerial tasks: paperwork.

And the one thing they both knew: one never interrupted Paperwork Patrol.

Not if you valued your life. Or disliked being sent on trash runs.

Additionally, it being a holiday and all, neither had any intention of keeping Catherine at the office any later then she already was. Besides, there would be plenty of opportunity to catch up at breakfast on Saturday after all.

What Grissom hadn't told her, nor did Catherine now, was that coat in hand on her way out of the office, Catherine had stopped to pop her head in the layout room for a quick hello. Where Sara had disappeared off to, Catherine had no clue, but it was Grissom alone she had found there, pouring over scene photos.

She had offered her old friend no other greeting apart from a pleased: "I'm glad to see you two finally got your heads out of your asses."

Rather than be affronted, Grissom only grinned as he turned to face her. "It's always good to see you, too, Catherine."

The feeling was mutual.

In the momentary fond silence, Catherine Willows gave Gil Grissom a thorough once over. He certainly looked better than the last time she had seen him. He'd lost a bit of weight. His previous general scruffiness had given way to a neatly trimmed goatee. He wasn't nearly so carelessly thrown together.

All due to Sara's influence Catherine figured. The perpetual smile was likely due to Sara, too. Grissom certainly seemed more content that Catherine could ever quite recall seeing him in all the years they'd known each other.

All in all, he looked nearly ten years younger than he had only months before.

Whatever had passed between him and Sara suited him.

"I don't even need to ask how you are," she said with an approving grin of her own. "You look like a man who's right where he wants to be.

"The company more so than the place, I'd imagine."

Grissom held her gaze thinking he really was. Amazing how sometimes you had to travel the world and back again to realize what you most needed was waiting for you to return.

No, he never felt more fortunate. His heart almost ached with it.

As for Catherine, while life may have skewed her more cynic than romantic these days, the earlier sight of Grissom and Sara huddled over the evidence table looking utterly at ease and at home, warmed her heart; gave her a little bit more hope.

And Vegas could use all the hope it could get.

"It's good to have you both back," said Catherine. "And under far less... _complicated_ circumstances."

"You mean without mad bombers?"

 _Or former dominatrices,_ Catherine privately rued.

Aloud, but no less regretful, she said, "Not that the Freeman case isn't a bitch. Cases like that..."

"Bring the red out?" Grissom quipped, knowing all too well there were certain crimes and occasions where Catherine's fiery temper could match the color of her hair.

"Definitely. Post rape suicide. A mother's worst nightmare," she sighed. "You manage to get them through the bumps and bruises of childhood. Don't manage to kill them yourselves during the terrible teens. Then send them off to college thinking they are going to be fine, just fine on their own.

"And then something like this happens. To too many girls."

"One in four," Grissom sadly acknowledged.

"More than 110,000 a year, on the conservative end."

Then spoken with all the fervor of a mother with a still young daughter, she added, "Sometimes it makes you wish rape was still considered a capital crime."

Catherine had done the math, too, felt fortunate, beyond fortunate Lindsey had managed to make it through her college years unscathed in that particular way. Particularly when she recalled her own fear when she, having woken from being drugged, feared she might have been raped.

From his sympathetic, yet intellectually detached demeanor when it came to the subject, Catherine figured Sara had never told him about her visit to help Catherine afterwards. Sara had been gentle and calming, both professional and compassionate at the same time, as well as apparently discrete.

Yes, the last thing Catherine wanted was her daughter to have to go through that, to have to pick up the pieces after that sort of hell.

Grissom was still speaking, his tone not entirely unaffected after the day's evidence review. "America's silent epidemic. And certainly not what college is supposed to be about."

"Sad thing is, the rate is even higher for women that age who don't go to college," Catherine countered. "And those numbers are with a sixty plus percent unreported rate."

With a sad sigh, Catherine added, "I heard Mark Ellington took the case. And I thought good old Marjorie Wescott played dirty. She's got nothing on Ellington.

"Of course he has to play dirty. I've read the file, seen the evidence. Those boys practically signed their own confessions on Megan Freeman's body."

Both Grissom and Catherine knew that didn't always matter.

Certain she would never get an honest answer out of Sara, Catherine asked, "Sara hanging in there okay?"

Hers wasn't a question of abilities, or even concern about Sara's sometimes equally explosive temper, just friendly solicitude, a recognition that this sort of case was hard - particularly hard. Grissom recognized it as such.

"You know Sara," he replied, fondness tugging at the corners of his lips.

His Sara was a fighter. Always was, always would be.

As a speaker for the dead, she would, he knew, do everything in her power to seek justice for Megan Freeman.

He was just glad to be there with her while she did. Too many times he hadn't been. But he was here now.

Catherine sensed there was more to this than just Grissom's reply, but equally wasn't about to press. Not that pressing ever usually worked on Gil Grissom. You'd have a better chance of getting blood from a stone when that man's lips were sealed, she well knew.

So Catherine figured it was best to let it go. But before she did, she said, "Yeah, I'm really glad I didn't pull that one. Not so sure I could keep myself from reaching across the table and knocking the smug off those boys' faces.

"But -"

And at this she actually grinned. "You... You must be doing something right. Sara seems even more -"

Catherine paused in search of just the right word. With a wry smirk of her own, she recalled Sara's inadvertent admission nearly five years before that she and Grissom had _great sex_.

" _Satisfied_ than I remember," she finished.

Apart from the arch of an eyebrow, Grissom refused to rise to her thinly veiled taunt.

Catherine sighed. No point fishing.

In any case, it was obvious the man was completely smitten; Catherine knew that the moment she first mentioned Sara's name.

Then both serious and not, she said, "Gil, try not to screw it up."

Before he could comment, Catherine was already on her way out the door.

"I'd better run," she insisted. "The way things are going around here, we might - just might - get to sit down to eat before the start of next shift."

Grissom grinned. Thanksgiving in Las Vegas. Some things really never did change.

"I left Lindsey in charge of the turkey this year.

"Which has better odds do you think - burnt or coming out still half frozen?" she asked.

"No clue," Grissom laughed. "We don't do turkey."

"Of course you don't," Catherine replied with a chuckle of her own.

"See you - both - Saturday."

At Grissom's apparent sudden bout of puzzlement, she prompted, "Breakfast. _Frank's_."

"Right." He nodded, recalling as he did so, he and Sara's earlier decision to spring the whole _We got married_ news when everyone was together for breakfast after shift on Saturday morning.

"Saturday," he agreed.

Catherine lingered only long enough at the door to leave him with one last volley.

"Oh and Gil," she said, "don't work too late."

And with a wink and a grin she was gone.

However playful Catherine may have felt just the day before, standing here in Sara's apartment trying to work out what Hannah had done with Grissom, playful was the very last thing Catherine was feeling. Frustrated was more like, even though Sara, she knew, was doing the best that she could.

"We worked until about ten," Sara was telling her. "Didn't get home until late. Must have been well past eleven."

It was Sara's turn to remember, to recall the night before. They had been busy laughing and talking, she and Grissom as they had come in, as they busied themselves with all the usual busyness of getting home after a long day: shucking off their shoes, depositing keys, letting Hank off his leash. Grissom had been in the midst of taking Sara's coat when he leaned in and murmured, "Shower -" in her ear.

Knowing the suggestion was based on his hope that the warm water might help wash away the last of the long day's tension, as it so often did, rather than a comment on her current state of hygiene, Sara wordlessly acquiesced.

Under the spray, Sara caught herself in the midst of soaping for the third time. Old habits really did die hard. At least back in Vegas.

Out on the open ocean with Grissom, she hadn't needed their comfort. But then sea salt was far easier to wash out of one's hair than the stench of death, even if it was but mere remembered stench.

But tonight, she found she didn't need the ritual near as much as she needed her husband, her husband who had just willingly spent an emotionally grueling day to be there with her - for her.

 _Husband_ -

Sara couldn't help but beam at the word as she hurriedly toweled herself off.

They would leave the case for the day, go on with living life, talk of other things, simply spend time together as husband and wife, just as Andrea had instructed that she should.

God, it was good to regard Grissom that way again.

Still attempting to wrest her unruly mop of wet curls into a haphazard ponytail, Sara reentered her rather cramped kitchen space to find Grissom pouring tea into two mugs.

Grissom had been pleased when he turned to take her in. Perhaps it was the hair. She wore it like that more often these days: loose and curly, silly as it was with all the time they spent out in the wet ocean air to even begin to bother with straightening it. Or so Sara had maintained. Sara hadn't returned to the habit in Vegas, much to Grissom's pleasure, him having always harbored a not entirely secret appreciation for those curls of hers.

Of course it may have been the outfit. She had padded out barefoot, clad in nothing more dressy than a thin-strapped camisole and a pair of yoga pants. And looking sexy as hell, to Grissom's reckoning, and all the while with Sara apparently not having the least clue to that fact.

She also didn't seem to know that standing there looking as she did, at that moment Sara, could have asked him for anything and Grissom would have moved heaven and earth if he had to to give it to her. Luckily for him, all Sara Sidle had ever really wanted was him.

The appreciation wasn't solely one sided. Grissom, with a tea towel draped over one shoulder, and him having changed into sweatshirt and jeans, looked far more relaxed and at ease and not the least like someone who had just spent the day sifting and arguing his way through a heart-wrenching case.

That evening, Sara admired that in him, took comfort in his quiet presence, rested in the joy that he was here; that they were here together.

Sara knew exactly what to be thankful for this Thanksgiving: Grissom.

Gil Grissom and him back in her life for good.

No more long distance, no more misunderstandings, no more good intentions. Just a life - a real life - with each other again.

She was grateful, beyond grateful for him - for everything: the evening, the long day, the last few months, for this life lived together. There weren't words for just how much; just weren't words at all.

At the moment, Sara figured it was time to make use of some of her own advice. So she simply showed him.

Their kiss proved long and sweet and might have lingered, if the sudden ding of the doorbell didn't serve to tug them apart.

Still, before he finally released her, Grissom asked, his warm blue gaze intent on her face, "Better?"

"Much," Sara replied. "You were right. Of course."

Grissom's grin implied _Naturally_ , causing Sara to purse her lips in an attempt to not roll her eyes as she reached for the wad of cash on the counter top.

"I'd better get the door, _Gilbert_ ," she said.

She further smiled at the sight of Tim Woo with several large paper bags in hand. _Chinese delivery._ She should have known.

While the rest of Vegas might be busy gorging themselves on turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing and pie, for Grissom and Sara, it just wouldn't be Thanksgiving without Chinese take-out.

Not all traditions were bad after all.

"Hey, Sara. Late night," Woo greeted her.

"Work. Looks like you, too, Woo," she replied.

The young man nodded as Grissom joined her to help with the bags. If Woo was surprised to find Sara not alone this time, he didn't show it. He simply wished her his usual genial goodnight.

Considering the sheer number and heft of the bags, Grissom had apparently ordered a veritable feast.

With a strange mixture of shock and appreciation, Sara watched her husband unpack, then crack open each of the containers.

Garlic broccoli, sweet and sour shrimp, sesame shrimp, lobster fried rice, sautéed mushrooms and cartons of lo mein all took their places beside piles of vegetarian egg rolls and crab rangoon.

"Hungry?" Sara asked aghast.

"'One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well,'" Grissom sagely intoned.

"Confucius?"

"Virginia Woolf," he supplied.

With that, Sara simply surrendered, sat and dug in.

Neither all that interested in bothering with plates that night, they ate directly out of the cartons, chopsticks occasionally clacking when they each dipped into the same box at the same time.

Before long, the counter was clear of everything but a pair of fortune cookies.

Sara passed her husband one, took up the other. As Grissom slipped on his reading glasses, the better to examine his own fortune, Sara read, "'A tall, dark stranger will come into your life.'"

When Grissom looked particularly askance at this, his wife flipped her fortune over to show him the real one.

 _It's a good time to finish up old tasks_ , it read.

"The Chinese have obviously never heard of forensic backlog," Sara rued.

"It can't be that bad."

"Sixty-eight open cases," she sighed. "Reviewed the inventory yesterday."

At the thought of all of her open cases, Sara cringed. She'd returned to Vegas six years before, purely on a temporary basis, in hopes of making a dent in the hundred plus cases Riley Adams had so hastily left behind.

That hadn't happened - the purely temporary or the dent. And here Sara was leaving quite a few of her own behind.

But it was an ever unending battle, this Sara knew, too. Would always be.

It was time to let someone else fight the good fight for a while. And that, that was okay.

"What can you do?" Sara shrugged and after taking a bite of cookie, opted to change the subject. "Of course, you know fortune cookies really aren't Chinese.

"American, by way of Japan."

From the curious way Grissom was peering at her over his reading glasses, perhaps it was for the best that she hadn't mentioned the fact that July 20th was National Fortune Cookie Day.

"What?" she asked. "I... I eat a lot of Chinese."

"May I?" her husband asked in turn, indicating the fortune still clutched in her hand.

Sara readily handed it to him, curious herself as she watched him take out a pen, turn the slip over and briefly scribble on the reverse before returning it to her to read.

"'Even know-it-alls eventually discover they don't know everything,'" she read. "Cute, really cute, Gil. Like you can talk."

As Grissom couldn't rightly refute this and with Sara being, in truth, far more amused than vexed, all the pair of them could do was laugh.

So they did.

Once their chuckles died down, Sara in all seriousness turned to him and said, "Besides, haven't you heard, _Doctor_ Grissom?

"Smart's the new sexy."

Grissom seemed to consider this for a moment. From the openly appreciative look he was giving her, he appeared to agree.

Sara nearly blushed.

To hide this, she quickly added, "Remember the time Greg insisted we all add the phrase 'in bed' to the end of every fortune?"

"Yeah."

Grissom didn't do literal eye rolls, but his tone certainly suggested it.

Upon finishing up the last of his own cookie he said, "I ran into Greg today."

"You, too, huh?" Sara laughed.

Although Greg certainly hadn't said anything to her about it. Mind you it hadn't been all that long of a conversation exactly.

Sara, for her part, had nearly physically run into Greg in the hall on his way back from what must have been a particularly nasty crime scene.

It certainly had smelled like it.

Understandably, the younger man had been a little terse.

"Don't ask."

Sara hugged him anyway.

"And you were telling me to stay out of trouble," she grinned.

"And look how well that turned out," Greg rejoined. "Only you two would find a dead body in Paris."

"It was more like three."

It was Greg's turn to laugh. "But who's counting?"

Where the conversation would have headed next, Sara never found out as Greg's phone chose that precise moment to go off.

Greg, peering down at the caller ID, muttered, "Morgan."

"You should definitely get that then," Sara insisted. "Don't you know better than to keep a girl waiting?"

Sara shot him a sly look and a smirk before she began to saunter down the hall.

Greg called after her. "What, no good-bye?"

Sara half wondered if Greg had felt as left hanging then as she did at Grissom's current pronouncement.

When her husband hadn't continued on with his story, she prompted, "And?"

"He had a few choice words."

" _Greg?_ " Sara stammered in disbelief.

The Greg she knew may have grown up and hardened quite a bit over the years, the job did that to you, but _choice words_ really weren't Greg's style.

"About?"

"You. Me."

"And?"

It really was like pulling teeth.

Yet Grissom didn't seem the least bit upset or bothered about the events, only more contemplative if anything.

"He reminded me in no uncertain terms that if I hurt you again, he knew where to hide a body."

Both amused and agog, Sara asked, "And what did _you_ say?"

"I told him I'd bring the shovel."

Okay, Sara wasn't entirely sure what to say to that.

Greg, she knew, was only trying to be a good friend, as misguided as those attempts might ultimately prove. He only wanted the best for her. Perhaps that's why Grissom hadn't been offended. He wanted very much the same. Not that Grissom tended to offend easily in the first place.

As for Grissom, his response, while appearing perhaps cavalier, Sara knew was anything but. It was rather, she realized, a very public admission of his willingness to take responsibility for Sara and her happiness, a verbal indication that he had absolutely no intention of making the same mistakes he'd made before.

Not that there hadn't been mistakes on both sides - far too many to count.

But this time would be different. He wanted it to be different; she wanted it to be different. And so far it had been.

So when her husband said things like that, it gave Sara hope that it could and would continue to be different.

But then _the only constant in the universe is change_ as Grissom was frequently wont to say.

And this - all this - these past few months - the life they had begun to build together again - had proved a wonderful change indeed.

Sara peered over at the man she had loved for nearly half her life, the man who was once again her husband and flushed with fondness. And something more.

These days it seemed omnipresent, that deep hum of desire which constantly passed between them.

Perhaps, it had been all the time apart. Perhaps it was once again possessing something one never thought to possess again. Whatever it was they couldn't seem to keep their hands off each other these days.

Love wasn't always just for the young. This they both knew.

A lot older and a bit wiser, passion for all the years they'd known and loved each other proved all the sweeter still.

So she wasn't about to resist its lure any longer that night. Snagging Grissom's fortune and commandeering his pen, Sara set about leaving him a fortune of her own.

Though before he could read it properly, she had shifted off her stool and trundled off to the bedroom.

For a moment, Grissom merely goggled after her. Then donning his spectacles again, he read, a slow grin spreading over his features as he attempted to decipher his wife's usual chicken scratch.

It simply read: _You will soon find happiness._

Recalling their earlier conversation on fortunes, Grissom mentally added the phrase _in bed_ to the end of her scrawl.

"So are you coming?" Came his wife's voice from just beyond the bedroom door.

He didn't have to be asked twice.

Besides, kisses really were the best dessert.

xxxxxxx

Back in her kitchen, intently watching Morgan set to work printing the apartment's doors and flat spaces, Sara didn't tell Catherine this. Any of it.

Like the two slips currently housed in her pocket, it was just too much, too close. And Sara agreed with her husband: there really were just some things best kept private.

Instead, she said, "He ordered take-out while I was in the shower. Our usual. Chinese. Same place. Same delivery driver as always - before you ask.

"We had dinner and -"

That _and_ hung there for a long moment - a very long moment - until Sara quietly finished, "We went to bed."

Catherine knew there was a lot more to that _and_ that Sara wasn't telling.

If the circumstances had been different, she might have been tempted to call Sara out on her bullshit response. But today wasn't that sort of day. So Catherine simply left it at that.

Sara's own treacherous memories weren't nearly so considerate.

Sara ached at the memory of him meeting her in the doorway, catching her up in a kiss, how they stumbled their way to bed, too intent on kissing as they swiftly separated each other from their clothes. How once both naked, he'd eased her back onto the bed before covering her body with his own. How they each been rendered breathless by the time they were done, having made love like the newlyweds they were.

The cookies did know all after all.

How later they had, not bothering to dress, slid between the sheets to curl up in each other's arms. How relaxed and sweetly sated, they had both soon slipped off to sleep.

No wonder it had taken Conrad's call to rouse her that morning. But then Sara never did sleep as well as she did with Grissom beside her.

But like all the rest, Catherine didn't need to know that either.

Catherine let Sara have a moment, before she asked, "And what about today? Any calls, messages, emails?"

Sara shook her head. "No. It was a quiet morning until Ecklie called me in around seven or so."

"And that was the last time you saw him?"

Sara knew Catherine had to ask, but the question still rattled.

Or maybe it was the _last_ that did.

"Grissom? Yeah," she stammered a little uneasy.

Sensing Sara's disquiet, Catherine gave her a reassuring: "We're almost done here. Just a few more questions. Okay?"

Sara gave her a silent, knowing nod to continue.

"You two talk about his plans for the day at all?" Catherine asked.

"Just dinner with his mother tonight."

"You texted him this morning. You call?"

"No."

"Never mentioned Hannah?"

"I didn't want to worry him," said Sara.

"Okay," Catherine finished, electing to end her questioning there. "Okay."

Even if she knew things were anything but.

xxxxxxx

A/N: For more about what Sara didn't tell Catherine about her and Grissom's time back in Vegas, see (Not) Your Usual Ups and Downs.


	5. Five: (Not Entirely) Idle Chatter

**Five: (Not Entirely) Idle Chatter**

The car was quiet.

 _Too quiet_ , Catherine thought, peering anxiously at the silent sitting Sara beside her.

Catherine Willows had thought the ride from the lab to the apartment had been bad, but the scant three-quarters of a mile jaunt from Sara's place to the park proved practically interminable.

If it seemed that way to her, Catherine was certain it had to be ten times worse for Sara. Catherine knew, too, she couldn't even begin to fathom the nightmare Sara was living through right now.

Her Eddie had been murdered, true, but by the time any of them had come to the case, it was all over and done. Catherine's ex-husband was dead. And there was nothing anyone could do to change that. That had been frustrating and heartbreaking as hell. This - what ever this was that Hannah had up her sleeves - was something else. Something far, far harder.

Sadly, Catherine wasn't so sure there was anything any of them could do now. Not knowing Hannah the way she did. But that was the last thing Sara needed to be reminded of at the present.

She needed something else. A distraction. A comfort. _Something_.

The glint of gold on Sara's left hand caught Catherine's eye and gave her an idea.

"I'd offer my congratulations," she began, "if things were different."

With the faint twitch of the lips and a wordless nod, Sara realized she had once again been worrying her recently returned wedding ring.

"I mean," Catherine continued, "I didn't even get a cryptic postcard this time."

The twitch was back again as Sara recalled that Muscovy duck fronted postcard Grissom had selected to spring the news to Catherine and the rest of the lab when they'd gotten married the first time. Well, to hint at it at least. He never had come right out and said it. _We have some news,_ being as much as he'd written. It had taken a phone call several weeks later before the cat was actually out of the proverbial bag.

"I had to hear about it from Lindsey over turkey," Catherine lamented. "Well, what was supposed to be turkey. Wouldn't really call that turkey."

She shuddered. "Just thinking about it almost makes me wish I was a vegetarian. _Almost._

"Anyway, we were sitting at the table in the middle of dinner when out of the blue she asked me if I knew. And of course I had no clue what in the world she was talking about.

"I nearly choked on my wine when she mentioned the rings."

"We were going to spring the news at breakfast tomorrow," came Sara's quiet reply.

"I figured."

Catherine should have known. As strange as it sometimes seemed, they belonged together, those two. Sure, she'd been surprised when Grissom had dropped the bomb all those years ago. Surprised, too, to find out that her friend, long time coworker and boss wasn't just some lonely workaholic after all. But in hindsight, it made sense. They made sense. They still did - despite everything.

It was obvious: even post divorce, Sara was still in love with him. It had been written all over her. As for Grissom, she supposed you never really did know with him. Arguably, the man had become even more eccentric since the last time they'd met. But then Grissom and weird frequently did go together.

Still, neither of her friends had seemed to be all that particularly happy apart. So Catherine had been pleased, beyond pleased, to find those two had once again found happiness together.

Not every couple got to keep their happy ending. Considering all the things Grissom and Sara had been through - both together and apart - Catherine was glad, infinitely glad, they seemed to have finally found there way back where they belonged: with each other.

There was just one problem, Sara thought as Catherine's words really sank in. Sara hadn't spoken more than a handful of words to Lindsey Willows since she'd been back.

Her meetings with the Deputy District Attorney being more of the diurnal variety and Lindsey busy on Grave, the two women had exchanged little more than the usual quick hellos and briefest of pleasantries. Sara certainly hadn't made any mention of her marriage to her. Neither, she was fairly certain, had Grissom.

So how the girl had known -

The ring, she suddenly realized, the same wedding ring Sara continued to fiddle with now.

"Lindsey doesn't miss much, does she?" Sara observed. "Like mother like daughter."

Catherine chocked back a chuckle at this.

"These days I seem to get most of my news from Lindsey.

"Quicker than FaceBook and uncannily accurate.

"She's the one who told me you'd gone," Catherine added. "Although all she could really tell me at the time was Ecklie had told them you had 'something you needed to take care of' and was I still interested in the director job?

"Did you know Grissom sent her a box of chocolate covered grasshoppers? A welcome to the lab gift apparently. And he's been sending her forensic help via snail mail."

At this Catherine sounded surprised, pleased and inordinately fond. "Why I have no clue. But then you never do know with Grissom, do you?"

Sara did know actually. At least about the letters. She'd seen him writing a few of them herself and heartily approved. He'd originally been her mentor after all. She knew no one better. She knew the why, too.

That Catherine didn't know the details behind Sara's leaving meant Lindsey hadn't shared her interrogation room observations with her mother. Nor told her of that little _tête à tête_ with Sara when she had so adamantly insisted Sara should definitely watch the end of Heather Kessler's statement. Lindsey obviously hadn't mentioned the tape or its contents at all. This discovery left Sara with a newfound respect for the rookie investigator. That and she knew Greg and Morgan were certainly going to have their hands full with her.

However, Sara hadn't heard about the crickets.

Like most people, she might enjoy her fair share of chocolate in various forms, but unlike her entomophagous husband, she drew the line at ruining it with bug parts.

It didn't matter how many times Grissom had teased her about her squeamishness and apparent hypocrisy when it came to bug eating. For she would, as he never did hesitate to point out, readily eat lobsters or shrimp or many another aquatic arthropod.

That he continually insisted that lobsters really were nothing more than the cockroaches of the sea, still did nothing to change her mind.

Once Sara had made the mistake of losing a bet, the end result of which meant having not to eat crow, but rather roasted cricket. That had not been an experience she had been all together all too eager to repeat - ever.

"Did she eat them?" Sara asked, still making a face at the possibility.

"Yeah, she did," Catherine reluctantly admitted.

The two exchanged identical _Better her than me_ grimaces.

Apparently, Lindsey appreciated his little thank you gift. Sara supposed at least it hadn't been yet another chemistry set.

"Look," Catherine began. "Sara, I won't pretend to know what happened between you two -"

But then Catherine really hadn't. Grissom's unconscious confession, finding Sara's very real presence in his townhouse, Grissom's going, their initial marriage, all their time apart, the eventual divorce, Sara leaving, the two of them returning married again, it all still came as a surprise to her.

Well, maybe not Grissom or Sara's going exactly. Grissom's she knew. Sara she should have known.

Otherwise, those two always were full of surprises.

Not that Sara could fault Catherine's confusion. For much of the last few years, Sara hadn't understood what had happened either. There were days she still didn't; still couldn't work out how it had all come together then all fallen apart.

But if she had to boil it down, the what happened, it all came down to too many miles, too many days, too many missed calls, too many hard cases, too many good intentions gone awry and ultimately too many cross words and too few crosswords completed together.

Sara hadn't lied that day she'd told her mother-in-law that she and Grissom made it work, their unconventional marriage, the unconventional life the two were living together apart. The phone calls, the visits kept them going. Sure, it was never the most ideal arrangement. But it had worked.

Until it stopped working.

When that was precisely Sara never could, even in twenty-twenty hindsight, manage to work out.

Their long longed for grant never did come through. Her work in Vegas became yet again its usual all-consuming self, while Grissom became more and more absorbed in his consulting projects. His assignments ran long; hers never ended. His work kept him away; her work kept her in Vegas.

Before long with his schedule more and more packed and hers showing no sign of letting up, even their one weekend a month together had become a Herculean endeavor neither had the energy for.

Soon three weeks apart became four - then six - then eight. Then, too, with his frequently spotty cell service and her difficult schedule, even the what had once been daily phone calls grew few and far between. Considering the perpetual differences in time zones and sleeping schedules, all the tiredness, frustration and fatigue, it was a wonder the calls hadn't become more infrequent sooner.

Still, the not talking had happened gradually. True, Sara could have called him. Heck, there had been times when Grissom did call and she could have, should have, picked up but didn't. She couldn't shuffle all the blame on him.

But she did blame him. Blamed herself. Blamed work. Blamed Vegas.

Only Sara didn't know how to ask for things to be different; how to tell her husband it wasn't working anymore this _him there her here_ life they had settled into.

What had originally started as a temporary way to pass the time until their grant came through had become their permanent lives and in the end what had undone them.

But it only all really seamed to unravel after that Christmas nearly three years before. Grissom's impromptu holiday visit then had proven to be his last. Though neither would have imagined it at the time.

In fact, Sara had felt buoyed by his homecoming. Despite how little time they actually had gotten to spend together, her having been repeatedly called in; how very little they had actually managed to catch up, Sara really had felt a bit of that fleeting hope return. That perhaps all of her misgivings and apprehensions were for naught. That despite the distance, everything would be all right. They would be all right.

But then it had been her birthday. And he wasn't there. _Again_. And he hadn't called. _Again._ And she couldn't reach him. _Again._

And it was just one too many times. One too many times he hadn't shown up when he was supposed to. One too many evenings off spent alone. One too many times having to go to bed alone, only to wake up that way, too. One too few conversations.

So after his voicemail had prompted her to leave a message, Sara had.

Hurt and angry, she'd lost her temper; angrily spat out that she couldn't do it anymore: the never knowing when he'd be home, if he'd be home. That maybe... maybe it would just be better if he didn't plan on coming home when he finished his latest consulting gig.

The moment she had hung up, Sara had regretted her words. Only by then it already had been too late to take them back.

And of all the times Grissom listened.

He took her at her word. He didn't come back.

Still, Sara thought he would call. They could talk. She could attempt to explain. But he didn't; she didn't. And the silence became deafening between them.

That was the problem with certain silences, they only begot more silence, until they became the sort of silences no words can dispel.

By the time they had finally spoken again, it had proven too late to explain, apologize, anything. There was just too much hurt on both sides.

So when Grissom had sent the divorce papers, Sara had signed them. After all their years together, their life together done; undone all at once.

She moved out. Grissom apparently moved on. Things ended.

And life was, for better or worse, what it was.

Sara returned to her old obsessive work habits. There was always work. Vegas was good for that: that endless dance of one step forward, two steps back.

Still, work was easier than trying to find other ways to fill the hours and the ache. It kept you occupied; made the long days and longer nights pass just a little easier. Theoretically.

Yet even at work, amongst her friends, she remained achingly lonely without him. Even more strangely, she found sometimes being around people made her feel more alone, rather than less.

She thought it would get easier. Thought with time and distance, the hurt wouldn't hurt so much, the ache of missing would lessen, that the love would finally fade away.

None of it ever did.

It never did stop hurting, her heart, not really, like the arm she had broken in two places. The fracture had healed, but even years later, cold nights or the infrequent Vegas rain still made the broken places ache.

The loneliness was like that. Some days it raged. Some days ached. Some it twinged. Others it didn't seem to hurt at all.

Similarly, life would be going on normally, as normally as things ever did in Las Vegas, and then something would happen that would remind her of him, or she'd come across some tidbit she knew Grissom would find fascinating or one of those ever apropos quotes of his would float to the surface of her memory, usually at the most inopportune time.

If she kept busy, stayed busy, she could pretend she missed him less. She'd thought with the divorce it would be over, that missing, that and the hurt and the anger and the love. She thought she had put those feelings aside when she'd signed her name at the bottom of that page, boxed them all up at the same time she packed away all her mementos of their life together, shoved them into the back of her brain behind her own mental _Do Not Cross_ tape. Yet they remained.

She still loved him; was in love with him. No matter how hard she tried not to be, she never stopped.

But none of that mattered with him oceans away.

Until he came back.

And not for Sara.

It wasn't like she hadn't known he was coming. However under protest, she was, after all, the one who had given Conrad Ecklie Grissom's number.

And then he was just there. Back. As if it was an everyday occurrence for him to show up at the lab bag in hand, ready to consult on a case.

He was there and close enough to touch and yet a universe apart.

With Ecklie and Catherine, his old familiarity proved easy; with Russell, Grissom granted him all his usual polite attention, with her, however -

How strange, Sara rued, to be strangers again after all their years together.

She honestly had no idea what her ex-husband had been up to since the divorce, apart from the whole _ocean - boat - Jacques Cousteau_ thing. Though if she had thought they could catch up on the car ride to Lady Heather's house, all too swiftly Sara had found she'd been sorely mistaken.

Grissom couldn't even come up with a single thing to say the entire way. Not one.

If Sara needed any further confirmation that despite whatever he may have felt for her before, Gil Grissom certainly didn't feel that way now, his continued silence spoke volumes.

Unable to shake the reality that Grissom was here for Lady Heather, that he'd readily - willingly - near instantly - laid aside whatever work he was in the midst of to show up in order to heed that siren's call after all the times he hadn't done the same for her, Sara felt her frustration rise with each silent mile.

Besides, it wasn't like Grissom was usually in want of words. Quite the opposite in fact. So how he could just sit there and say nothing, she couldn't understand. Or perhaps she could. After all, when it had come to her, he'd been virtually silent for years.

Of course once they'd reach Heather's domain, Sara had done enough talking for the both of them. Her traitorous over-talking mouth just would not shut up.

How was it after all this time, after everything, Grissom still managed to turn her into a stumbling stammering mess?

But then no one had ever discombobulated Sara like he did. Standing there unable to control her rampant talkativeness, she had felt again like that awkward woman who didn't know how to talk to the man she'd been in love with since as long as she could remember. It was in that moment that Sara realized she was _that_ woman.

She hated being that woman.

Thankfully, ever oblivious Gil Grissom didn't seem to notice. He'd only said -

It didn't matter what he'd said. Sara wouldn't - couldn't - think about it.

It would do her no good to read anything into anything her ex-husband said anymore. She was not going to let herself feel anything for the man who just decided one day he didn't want to be a part of her life anymore; the man who still made her heart ache. She just wouldn't.

She would focus on the work. It was work, purely work. Nothing personal.

Except oh how Heather Kessler had enjoyed making it personal.

Recusing herself from the interrogation had been Sara's only recourse when it came to keeping her temper - and her sanity.

But then Heather always had known how to push her buttons. At least after the former dominatrix turned therapist had found out about Sara and Grissom, she did.

True, Sara had been Grissom's wife, but there was still something between Heather and Grissom, something separate - private - personal - which irked Sara to no end.

Yet all her irritation with Heather, all her hurt when it came to Grissom, none of that ultimately mattered the moment the team had stood there in A.V. watching the unknown bomber detail just how Grissom would be his next target.

No matter what, Sara would fight tooth and nail for him; do whatever it took to protect Grissom, to keep him safe. She even went to Heather on her own, practically begged, laid herself bare before the other woman.

She admitted, yes, she was worried; yes, she was still in love with Grissom.

When that hadn't worked, Sara had even sought him out herself.

Grissom didn't need any help. Better than anyone, Sara knew just how capable he was. But she hadn't been able to resist.

He hadn't been the only one who missed working side by side. Sara just wasn't ready to admit it to him.

That Catherine had seen right through her had been bad enough; that Heather knew, too. That Grissom hadn't, suited Sara just fine. She didn't need any further humiliating rejection.

Work, however, she could handle. But then they'd always been able to talk about the work.

Still, it had been hard not to flush with fondness at finding him talking to his bees. Shocker indeed. Shocker, too, that they still worked well together, the two of them.

As for that afternoon with him – and the bees, she'd enjoyed it probably too much even though she knew she shouldn't, even if it had proven easy, so easy to slip back into the ease of working together; to return to all the old regular routines of theirs, the ones they had had off and on nearly two decades to perfect.

It had been almost possible then to believe -

But no, there was no way she was going to let herself finish that thought. Sara knew better. She had let herself enjoy the day far too much already.

It didn't matter that for those handful of hours out at Mt. Charleston with the bees, it had felt like old times - good times, if only for a little while. Not when she knew that when the work was done they would retreat to separate beds and separate lives.

Anyway, beyond the work, Grissom didn't seem to have much to say.

Prior to the first of the bees' return, she'd sat in the shade tight and tense, hoping against hope, that he'd say something, anything.

After her earlier nerve-induced logorrhea, Sara certainly couldn't trust herself to speak.

But no, it was as if he was right there and gone all at once.

Then soon, all too soon, it was time to say good-bye.

Part of her had been glad he had been there for the announcement of her promotion to lab director. After all, without him, she would never would have made it.

He'd saved her from the worst parts of herself. Ultimately, she never did turn into that loose cannon Ecklie had warned Grissom about. Nor did she end up completely self-destructing; never succumbed to the alcohol, or to her private despair. His love had done that for her. It had calmed her, eased her. His belief in her had helped her to begin to believe in herself. He loved her, so she must therefore be worth loving. For the first time in her life, Sara had felt worth it.

The promotion announcement had been the first time since the divorce she had felt that way again.

Honestly, she never had dared to imagine it, that promotion. But it was her name Ecklie announced, her hand he shook, her name on the badge.

Yet all too soon, her pride in that moment - and Grissom's apparently - gave way to far harsher realities.

Sara had told herself she was not going to cry. She would say good-bye and walk away, but she was not going to cry. It didn't matter if her promotion proved bittersweet; Grissom's obvious pride, too. Now that it no longer mattered, Sara had finally managed to make him proud.

But he didn't love her anymore; want her anymore. This she knew.

It was written all over him; spoken in each of his silences. Sara knew, too, she never had stopped loving him. As much as it ached, she never had. She always would. Seeing him again had only brought back just how much she had failed to stop. It didn't matter if he didn't feel the same way; that he wanted different things.

She'd meant it, she really had, that she hoped he would find what he was looking for out there. Even when she knew she wasn't it, she had still wanted that for him.

Her last two words had proved hardest. They had to be said, still she hated saying them all the same. Throat constricted, both voice and heart breaking, Sara had said, "Bye, Gil."

And she went without another word. Good-byes were always best said without too much lingering. Not that there was all that much good to be found in this parting.

Only he never did, Sara later realized, Grissom never had told her good-bye. After everything they had been, he couldn't even manage to do that.

As for Sara, Sara went back to work. There was certainly plenty of it, more than plenty. Always had been, always would be. Vegas was Vegas and Sara would never want for work. Some things never changed. She wasn't entirely sure that was really a comfort, but it would have to do.

So it hadn't matter how many days straight she'd been up, how many hours she had spent on her feet, Sara hadn't been ready to go back to her apartment alone, hadn't been ready to face that half empty bed; her half empty life.

But then that was how she felt most of the time these days: oddly half empty.

For the first time, Sara had been beyond grateful for the paperwork. It would fill the hours. It would always fill the hours and the days and the years.

There would always be the dead. Always.

Then when Lindsey Willows had ambled in manila envelope in hand, bright-eyed and eager as ever (Sara knew she had been that young once, likely that eager, too, but it was hard to imagine it now), Sara Sidle hadn't known that her life was about to change.

After all, the last thing she wanted to do - _ever_ \- was sit through an intimate _tête à tête_ between Heather and her ex-husband.

But Lindsey had been rather insistent. Oddly insistent.

So Sara had set off to A.V. and grateful to find it empty, took advantage of the moment of relative privacy to slip the recording into the player.

What Lindsey had been on about wasn't readily apparent. It was a testimony tape, pure and simple, not all that unlike hundreds Sara had viewed throughout her career.

Only the freshly minted C.S.I. had mentioned the end. _Especially the end,_ she'd said before turning to go without another word.

Intent on fast-forwarding, Sara had neglected to hit stop in time and had to rewind the tape. With a deep breath, she hit play. Watched. Listened.

And knew.

Knew it hadn't been all one sided after all.

Grissom hadn't stopped missing - or loving - her either.

And Sara knew exactly what to do about it.

She just went.

xxxxxxx

Back in the Denali, Catherine hinted at the gold band on Sara's left hand. "All I've got to say is, it must have been one hellava reception."

Despite everything, Sara couldn't keep her lips from twitching.

It had been.

It certainly had been.


	6. Six: Hi

**Six: "Hi"**

It took a lot to faze Gil Grissom.

After his more than twenty-seven years as a field-rated crime scene investigator, he'd seen death and human cruelty meted out a thousand ways and rarely did more than raise an eyebrow. Not much shocked him anymore.

Yet Sara had.

Seeing Sara Sidle stride down that dock, Grissom had never been more taken aback in his life. No wonder all he could do was stand there wide-eyed, openmouthed, stock-still, stunned and staring.

Sara was pretty sure in all the near eighteen years she and he had known each other, she had never seen him wear _that_ expression before.

It was good to know she could still surprise him.

Good, too, to be on the giving rather than receiving end of said surprise for once.

Even better yet, to see him smile again.

That smile made the last few hours, the last few days, heck, even the last few years worth it.

Not even all of ten seconds. That was how long it had took upon reaching the end of Heather Kessler's testimony tape for Sara to make a decision.

 _Finally._

Popping the tape out of the player, she crammed it back into its envelope as she hurried down the hall to what was now her office. She hadn't even given the space, the one it had taken her an entire career to earn, a second glance as she hurriedly packed up her messenger bag.

Unlike the last time she had so precipitously left Vegas, Sara wasn't running away from something. Nor was she too overwhelmed by everything that she could no longer breathe, let alone think.

Instead, she opted to do what David Hodges hadn't done and heeded Grissom's once emailed advice:

 _Some things in life are puzzles_

 _and take a great deal of time and energy to figure out._

 _Others are simple, if only we allow them to be._

 _Be careful not to confuse the two._

This, this was simple. The easiest decision she had ever made.

It was time to go home.

Never more sure of anything in her life, there was no thinking about it. She just left. No plans. No expectations. Just knowing she loved him, wanted to be with him, and that was enough.

In the end, she followed her heart - and soul.

Still, the old butterflies were there - the ones that had first flickered back into existence the moment Grissom had strode back into the lab. For maybe, just maybe Grissom wouldn't be nearly as happy to see her as she would be to see him. There was always that fear, that risk. But if he'd meant what he'd told Heather, and Sara had no reason to doubt it or him, he would, she reasoned be happy to see her.

As for what happened after that - Sara hadn't the least clue.

And for once in her life she didn't care.

Thankfully, Conrad Ecklie had been in and not disposed to ask too many questions when she had strode into the sheriff's office to slap her newly minted director's badge onto his desk.

After that she hadn't even bothered to stop by her apartment. She just left her Prius in the lab lot and hopped a Yellow Cab to McCarran International Airport.

So that within an hour she was standing at the gate waiting for her flight to board; on the plane in almost less than two. Then before she knew it, she was stepping out of the cab and onto the dock.

By then that little flutter had morphed into an entire rabble. Yet they stilled, quieted, instantly soothed at the sight of Grissom wrapping rope, tossing lines, looking as natural as anything on his boat.

Apparently, she had arrived just in time - for once.

Grissom and his boat. Sara hadn't exactly given it much thought over the years. His choice had just hurt too much to for her to much linger over it.

Here and now, however, she couldn't help but smirk.

 _Of course._

 _Of course he had named it_ Ishmael.

Officer Scinta hadn't been wrong about that one. Grissom really had named his boat after Melville's sole survivor of Captain Ahab's cetacean obsession. Of course he had.

Not entirely sure how to track down her errant ex-husband, Sara had attempted to make good use of the hour before her flight to heed Ecklie's advice and give Officer Scinta of the Port of San Diego Harbor Patrol a call.

In a relatively quiet corner of the airport, she dialed and was relieved to find the man answering.

Afternoons she knew weren't the best of times to contact someone who worked nights. Sara, herself, wasn't the most pleasant person on the planet when she was unexpectedly woken, but the harbor patrolman answered his cell with a perfectly cheerful, "Scinta."

Then before Sara could even begin her well-practiced spiel, the man asked, "You from the Las Vegas Crime Lab, too?

"Vegas area code," he supplied before Sara could answer the question.

"Yeah."

"Looking for Dr. Grissom? The C.S.I. at sea? The poacher catcher?" Scinta added, rightly reading the silence on Sara's end of the line as confusion.

"Pretty popular guy with you folks," he said. "Trying to track him down?"

Again before Sara could even begin to reply, he helpfully supplied, "Boat should still be moored at the marina. Told me he wasn't taking her out until later this afternoon when he stopped by to pick up his keys from impound.

"You know which boat you're looking for?"

Sara had to admit she didn't.

"She's a mid-sized deep sea fishing boat, goes by the name..." Scinta's voice trailed off as he struggled to recall the name. "It was a strange name for a boat, at least for around here.

"Sorta biblical sounding. Started with an 'i.'

"Isthmus... No..."

"Ishmael?" Sara asked.

"Yeah," the officer agreed. "That was it. Like I said, strange name for a boat."

 _Not so strange_ , Sara mused, _if you knew_ Moby Dick _\- or Grissom_.

Good old Ishmael, Melville's orphaned social outcast, world wanderer, and the sole survivor of the sinking of the _Pequod_ , who had only managed to escape drowning by floating on a coffin. _How apropos_. And that didn't even take into account that Gil Grissom just happened to share Ishmael's insatiable curiosity and inexhaustible sense of wonder.

 _No, not that strange,_ she thought, but did not say.

Instead of explaining, Sara simply thanked Scinta for his help.

"You see him," Scinta said, "tell him to try not to get caught the next time."

Sara nearly laughed. "I will."

As for Grissom, engrossed as he was in his work, he didn't spot Sara at first.

He'd been busy preparing the boat for launch, preparing to return to routine, to his life lived without Sara Sidle in it.

But not all the determined rush of busyness could conceal the worn and weary weight of fatigue.

He'd tried - and failed - not to think about her every minute since he'd left Vegas.

Then there she was - like something from out of a dream he hadn't even dared to dream, not with the harsh finality of her "Bye, Gil," still ringing in his ears.

And yet, Sara was here, right here, coming towards him, looking for all the world as if she had come straight from the lab. Which she had, though he wasn't to know it yet.

How - Why - He didn't know - Didn't care. Only that Sara, his Sara, was here.

He couldn't think. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't move.

His heart in his throat, all he could get out were the two syllables of her name.

Sara grinned. Yeah, it really was good to know she could still surprise him.

Then suddenly she stood only feet from him; stood waiting, he realized, for him while he, still unable to believe what his eyes were telling him, could only gape.

Finally coming to himself, Grissom held out a hand; felt hers slip comfortably into his, just as warm and familiar as he remembered; as it had been the first time they had touched like this.

Before either could marvel at how easy, so easy, their hands fit into the other's, he had released hers. The loss of contact, however, proved brief, for soon his grasp had slid about her waist to steady her as she stepped on board; her own settled on his shoulders.

He didn't let her go; Sara didn't either.

They stood there close drinking each other in.

A million questions flashed across his features, even if not a single one made it past his lips. Still not entirely able to quite credit what his eyes and hands were telling him, Grissom searched her face to be sure, sure she was here, really here.

For the first time since he'd returned to Vegas, Sara took him in, really took in the face she knew and had missed so well, a face now more worn and weathered than she remembered, yet no less handsome.

Though the nervous way he chewed at his lower lip was new.

But any age and fatigue had faded away the moment he smiled that first soft smile, that private grin she knew was only ever meant for her and her alone.

With a watery smile of her own, Sara drew him to her, finally closing the last remaining distance between them.

Her hands on him, both hands on him, taking him in, then holding him tight, Grissom's hands finally knew what to do: they held her hard; kept her close.

On her lips, his name came as soft and tender as any caress, as affectionate as any endearment.

For his part, Grissom buried his own smile into her hair, overcome as he was with the sheer joy of recovering something lost which he had never thought to find again.

A few hours before his heart was breaking with loss; now it nearly burst with love.

Feeling his scruffy cheek nuzzle hers, Sara breathed, truly breathed, for the first time in a long time, since the last time he'd held her like this; breathed in the warm, welcoming scent of him, of sweat and soap, all tinged as it was now with the hint of salt and sea.

After all the miles and years of distance, neither could get close enough, hold each other tight enough, long enough, get near enough to each other.

It was as if all time and space had stopped; nothing else existed in the entire world, nothing but each other.

Neither knew just how long they stood like that, resting in their familiar embrace, letting the closeness communicate for them both.

After what could have been a very long while, and yet in some ways did not feel near long enough, they broke apart, not far, nor did they let each other go. They only retreated just enough to further take each other in.

As he brushed a windblown strand back behind her ear, his eyes still searched her face as if to ensure she really was right here, right now, just as all the evidence was telling him, his head even yet still having a hard time keeping up with what his heart already knew.

 _It's you. It's really you,_ his eyes seemed to say.

Sara, feeling much the same, smiled; nodded. This time, her thumb lingered along his cheek.

When her voice finally caught up with the rest of her, she hazarded to offer by way of explanation: "I... I didn't want to spend the rest of my life missing you."

Grissom's eyes went, if possible, even wider. Her words were too close to be coincidence.

Besides, Gil Grissom didn't believe in coincidence.

She'd heard him. Somehow she had heard him.

His lips moved though no words, no sound, came out.

Finally, he stammered, "H- How? How did you -"

Then alighting on the only possibility he could come up with, he asked, "Heather?"

Heather Kessler could have told her, Sara supposed. Just as she could have told Grissom that Sara still loved him. But she hadn't.

Sara had a fairly good idea why and part of her couldn't blame the former dominatrix. Love was like that, Sara knew.

"No," she replied with a short half laugh. " _Lindsey_.

"You might want to think about getting her something cooler than a chemistry set for her next birthday.

"Not that that chemistry set wasn't cool -"

Apparently all this seemed to only further confuse rather than clarify, for Grissom simply stood there baffled.

Sensing he'd had enough near impossible things for one day, Sara took pity on him.

"You left the camera on, Gil," she said.

 _Well, that explained that_ , he thought. _Sort of._

His heart sank _,_ sad as he was that he could speak of such things to Heather and not to her. If only he could have spoken those words straight to Sara.

That didn't seem to matter near as much to Sara, if the affectionate smile she was currently shining on him was any indication. That and her fond murmur of "I'm glad you did."

Or maybe not.

For her next words were tinged with that same regret he was feeling.

"Why... Why didn't you just tell me?"

 _So many reasons_.

Ultimately, seeing her again really had been so utterly overwhelming, Grissom hadn't known what to say or even where to begin. Sara had, like she had so often done, really left him speechless. Only this time, he couldn't use a kiss or caress to convey all he most wanted to say.

Honestly, he'd never felt so tongue-tied and impotent in his life. Wanting to say so much; able to say so little. And there really had been so much, so very much, he had wanted to say to her.

He just - the right words - any words - they just wouldn't come.

And never had he needed them more. Never had they failed him so far.

Even his voluminous catalog of quotations, typically always so ready at hand, had utterly deserted him. He couldn't even manage the two short syllables of her name, no matter how many times he had wanted to.

No, somehow he could not seem to heave his heart into his mouth, not even as he watched the distance already stretched between them yawn ever wider.

That this woman who had once been his wife, his lover, his best friend, just wasn't any more, he'd suddenly found he hadn't truly realized the full extent of that loss until he was back in her presence again.

Strangers would have been easier. But they weren't that either. Couldn't be. Not after nearly eighteen years of knowing.

His mother was right: when it came to Sara, he'd always been _a moron, a coward and a fool_.

But not any more.

With a deep breath, Grissom elected to go in for honesty. Sara, he knew, deserved that.

"I didn't know how," he said softly.

Sara thought back to that letter, the one he'd written while at Williams but never sent, the one she had found in that copy of _The Complete Works of Shakespeare_ she had given him the Christmas before.

 _Our parting was awkward. I don't know why I find it so difficult to express my feelings to you,_ he'd written then.

Some things, Sara supposed, didn't change.

Her own sad smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, Sara nodded.

Equally honestly she answered, "And I... I probably wouldn't have listened anyway."

Sad, but true.

First, there had been all the miles between them, then all the hurt.

No probably about it really.

And perhaps, she realized, Grissom had in his own way tried so many times while they had both been back in Vegas.

 _Seeing you again left me a little speechless._

 _I miss working side by side with you._

 _Vegas is lucky to have you._

Even in his lingering _Well_ and _So,_ he had tried.

Sara just hadn't listened.

Once they'd used to joke about Grissom being the immoveable object while Sara had been the irrepressible force. In nature, as in physics, the two just couldn't coexist. The object had to move or the force cease.

But as in so many cases over the years, in this, their roles had reversed. Sara had become the immovable object and Grissom the irresistible force. They couldn't continue to exist that way, object and force not changing each other.

Sara was certainly listening now.

"I should have told you," Grissom began, his words heavy with regret. "Every day."

Sara met his gaze, brightened.

"You... You could tell me now."

 _To be Continued in_ Coming Onboard


	7. Seven: Coming on Board

**Seven: Coming Onboard**

Grissom was quiet for a moment considering this, as if carefully weighing his words, which he was: weighing what he most needed to tell her; most wanted Sara to know.

Recognizing this as a chance he knew he didn't deserve, he wasn't about to waste it. Not this time.

Even if he hadn't been able to quite find the courage back in Vegas, he had to now. He had to tell her. He at least had to try. He'd been tongue-tied and rendered dumb for far too long.

Somehow he had to find the words. For her. For himself. For them.

Apologies sprang to mind. For Grissom was sorry, terribly sorry for all he had done and not done to drive them apart. But he knew all too well that apologies were just words and all the _I'm sorrys_ in the world couldn't undo the past few years.

It certainly wasn't that he had nothing to say, but rather too much, everything he'd been so desperate to tell her back in Vegas, but just couldn't find the words. He merely needed a place to begin.

 _Keep it simple,_ what remained of his sense told him. _Keep it true_.

Suddenly, the words he couldn't seem to say, somehow proved easier with Sara so near, real and alive again in his arms. They came honest and unadorned and uncomplicated, even if the feelings behind them always weren't.

It was the bees that finally showed him where to start.

Bugs were good for that.

Recalling what he had told her back in the lab over his Plexiglas box of bees, he began, "I've... I've missed more than just working with you."

Sara nodded. She had too.

"I've missed you."

Sara had gathered as much from the video. However unsurprising, the words were still good to hear.

" _Us_."

The word hung between them for a long while, Sara the one now rendered speechless.

For Sara had missed that, too, and most. The everyday. The ordinary. The crosswords. Shared meals. Shared bed. Shared life.

The _us_ they hadn't been for far too long.

" _Honey_ -"

The corners of Sara's mouth twitched at the endearment. She found she couldn't help but flush with fondness. No one else had ever called her that. Many times she knew he didn't even realize he had done it himself. This time though, she knew it was deliberate.

Grissom took another deep breath. While he may have confessed much to Heather Kessler, what he most wanted to say next was meant for Sara's ears and hers alone.

"I need you."

Not that this was the first time he'd said as much to Sara. The very first had been scrawled in pen and ink across the frontispiece of that entomology textbook nearly a lifetime ago. He'd meant it, too, when he'd come to Costa Rica. That had been why he had come 3,500 miles to find her.

It was as true now as it had been then, maybe even more so.

"I do. I still do."

The last few days had only further proved just how much he did. He needed Sara, the very real, palpable, present Sara and not just the poor facsimile he'd been carrying around in his heart and head to keep him company.

True, he had survived without her all the days and weeks and months and years since the divorce. But that hadn't been the same as living. Not really.

Sara, trying to conceal her tears behind a tease, asked, "For more than just crosswords?"

Grissom grinned.

However his smile soon gave way to tender gravity when he replied, "For everything."

Unable to say or do anything else at this, Sara simply tugged him tight, herself trying desperately not to cry.

The attempt proved all the harder at the feel of his fingers in her hair, the tickle of his stubble against her cheek, the way he cradled her close.

But it was his soft, almost shy, confession of "I wanted to hold you since the moment I saw you" which undid her completely.

Part of him had wanted to hug her hard in that hallway instead of just standing there miles in their less than a meter apart. Yet he'd known he couldn't. Known that's what those divorce papers really meant: that she was no longer his for the holding.

After that, he hadn't known what to do with his hands around her, not when they ached to reach out to touch her and couldn't.

Having her here, now, he couldn't get enough of the feel of her beneath his fingers.

Yet it didn't escape his notice that she was nearly sobbing into his shirt. Unsure exactly what he'd done to make her cry even harder, he withdrew.

"Sara?"

His concerned query was rewarded with a smile of all things, a wet tearful smile, but a bright beaming smile all the same.

"Not all tears are unhappy ones," Sara supplied, attempting to roughly wipe her own away with the back of a hand.

Wordlessly, Grissom cupped her face in both his palms. The gentle pressure of his thumbs brushed the last of the wetness away.

At Sara's sniffle, he pulled a neatly folded cotton square from his pocket. Waiving the plain white handkerchief open, he pressed it into her palm.

"You're the only one I know who still carries these things," Sara smiled as she set about using it.

She made that sound as if that were a good thing; Grissom realized she meant it as such.

It was his turn to chuckle when with much noise and little grace - per usual - Sara loudly blew her nose.

Then curious she said to him, "And since when do you need help with your crosswords?"

Grissom shrugged. "Since I met you."

" _Gil -_ "

"Here, let me," he motioned for the messenger bag still slung over her shoulder. Sara, ducking it off, demurred.

Weighing it in his hands, and finding it wanting, Grissom finally summoned up the courage to ask something he had wanted to know ever since Sara set foot on the _Ishmael_.

Normally direct, he observed, instead, with feinted airiness, "You... uh... packed light," as he slipped the bag into a cubbyhole for safekeeping.

Sara couldn't keep back her grin. She had said nearly the exact same thing to him when Grissom had practically magically appeared from out of the rainforest with little more than a rucksack on his back. That had been nearly seven years ago now. Seven years and what felt like several lifetimes.

Odd how history really did have an odd sense of repeating itself. Particularly when you least expected it.

"Someone once told me it was good for the soul to possess nothing more than what you can carry on your back," she replied.

And it was then Sara realized she had left Las Vegas with exactly what she had first come to it with: a pair of sunglasses, the clothes on her back, a jacket, a tote bag and far more than fondness for one Gil Grissom.

"I just came," she offered at his quizzical look. "Besides, they do have stores in San Diego."

Grissom might have countered this blithe assertion by mentioning his ex-wife's particular loathing for shopping, clothes shopping in particular. Only that wasn't what concerned him most at the moment.

Part of him didn't really want to know. Having her here again, he wasn't all that keen on having to let her go.

But it had to be asked, he knew, too.

So he did.

"How - How long before you have to -"

"Go back to Vegas?" Sara finished.

Grissom nodded, all the while thinking: _Let it not be soon. Please let it not be soon._

"I'm not," she said and he let out the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

"At least not permanently. I mean, I'm sure there are some things I'll still need to wrap up. Court appearances. A few cases I can't get out of but -"

"You quit?" he asked.

"Officially, it's an _indefinite leave of absence_. But yeah -"

"But the promotion -" Grissom protested.

And once again Sara was filled with that odd sense of history repeating itself. For she had made not all that dissimilar protests when Grissom had told her he had left the lab for her.

Sara simply shrugged it off with a half smile. "Must be a record. Shortest sitting lab director in Vegas history."

Strangely, at least to Grissom, she sounded far more amused than rueful.

"Conrad wasn't exactly thrilled -"

Actually, Conrad Ecklie had been uncharacteristically understanding about the whole thing when Sara had strode into his office without knocking and proceeded sans greeting or introduction to slap her still shiny new Director's badge on his desk.

Sure, he'd looked surprised to see her, a little hassled, too, but then they'd all looked and felt that way after the Betton bombings.

"I hear Catherine's keen on relocating," was all Sara said. "You might still be able to catch her before she leaves town."

Ecklie simply shook his head and sighed, "Go. Just go."

Sara wasn't the sort who needed to be told twice.

She was halfway back to the door when she heard the sheriff mutter, "I should have known."

"You were the one who wanted to call him in," Sara reminded him.

Utterly unable to refute this, Ecklie didn't even try, he just waived her out.

Sara paused at the door. Realizing this hadn't been the first time Ecklie's actions had, however inadvertently, served to push her and Grissom together, she smiled.

Ecklie the most unexpected catalysts or no, Sara meant her, "I owe you one."

Before he even had a chance to reply, she chuckled, "And I know you won't hesitate to collect."

"Sara -" Ecklie called her back.

Unsure what he was about to do, she eyed him warily.

The sheriff only drew out one of his business cards, flipped it over, and pulling up a number from his own phone, scribbled it on the back.

"Try an Officer Scinta at San Diego Harbor Patrol. He should know best how to find him."

Sara grinned. "Thanks, Conrad.

"For everything."

 _Yes, Ecklie had been remarkably decent about the whole thing._

"But he'll get over it," Grissom finished back in the present. "He usually does. But -"

"Besides," Sara said. "You were right. The paperwork was murder."

"But -"

Was it so hard for Grissom to believe that she would choose him? From his perplexed expression, it was plain that it was.

Sara's voice deepened into affection. "Gil, you were the reason I came to Vegas. Why wouldn't you be the reason I left?"

Sure, Sara had wanted the promotion; had wanted the job; had worked her whole career for it.

She wanted him more.

"Besides," she added, "haven't you heard? Sometimes 'you must give up the life you planned in order to have the life waiting for you.'

"Joseph Campbell," Sara supplied with a laugh. "You aren't the only one who can do the quote thing."

When he didn't even smile, Sara slipped a hand around his cheek. The pad of her thumb intently caressed the space just above his scraggly beard. The touch long and lingering this time, his eyes closed and he seemed to settle into the contact.

"These last few years without you," she said, "they... they sucked."

Grissom nodded. While it may not have been the most articulate of expressions, _sucked_ was as true, as it was inelegant. That's exactly what the last few years had been like without her. There was no other word for it. They had sucked.

"Anyway," Sara was saying. "Officer Scinta - you know the harbor patrol guy - the one who arrested you for trespassing -"

Regrettably, Grissom was all too familiar with the man.

"He said something about you being a sort of C.S.I. at sea -"

Which wasn't all that strange really. Grissom still followed the evidence to catch killers. Serial killers even. He still spoke for the dead who couldn't speak for themselves.

"And I... I thought... I mean..." Sara stammered, then launched in with barely a breath between words: "You aren't the only one who's missed working together. And we always did make a good team.

"Besides, out here that physics degree might actually come in handy. And don't forget I did ace chemistry. So I do know how to blow things up.

"My ichthyology is a little weak, I admit, but you know I've always been a quick study.

"And I can learn whatever else you might need. I'm not exactly a green hand.

"So... I guess I just thought maybe -

"You could use a student -"

Sara nearly cringed. That so did not come out the way she had rehearsed it in her head during the flight over, rather instead far more like yet another bout of nerve-ridden logorrhea.

"What... What do you think?" she asked when Grissom didn't immediately comment.

Gil Grissom seemed, at least to her, to consider the possibility for an inordinately long time before eventually answering: "A student? No."

But before Sara's face could fall, he said, "You're way over qualified."

His warm gaze met hers. "But a partner? _Definitely_."

Sara was his match, of this he was certain. Truly the other half of his orange as Ticos were wont to say.

Besides, it wasn't like Gil Grissom didn't have a lot left to learn himself. _Perhaps too much, more than a lifetime's worth_ , he figured.

Fortunately, the woman back beside him again was the best teacher he had ever known.

Apprehending and appreciating the distinction, Sara returned his grin and nodded eagerly in agreement.

"Although," Grissom counseled, "you do realize it's a lot of long hours. Mostly nights."

"And that's different from the last sixteen years how?"

"The pay's lousy. There really isn't any."

"Uh huh."

"And we mostly tend to catch poachers after the fact.

"If we catch them," he added ruefully.

"Like I said, that's different from Vegas how?"

"And what we do... it's not... it's not entirely..."

Grissom hemmed over the word for a while before admitting: "Legal."

Sara laughed. "I heard."

And she had about Ecklie having to spring Grissom from Harbor Patrol custody.

"And I thought I had problems with authority," she sighed.

" _Sometimes you have to break the law to keep the law-_ "

From his attempt at an airy demeanor, Sara had the sneaky suspicion this last time hadn't been Grissom's first run in with the law.

"I have to admit," Sara said, "I'm still trying to wrap my head around the whole _Gil Grissom, eco-pirate, rebel with a cause_ thing.

"You know, I'm not sure if Henry's more afraid or in awe of you.

"Me, I'm still having a hard time imagining you in handcuffs."

Although her tone suggested otherwise.

"Still, I suppose if we get into any trouble around here we can always call Nick to bail us out."

"Nick?"

"You didn't hear? He's lab director down here."

"Good for him."

"And us," Sara agreed. "Could really come in handy if half of what I heard from Conrad is true."

Grissom was about to protest when he noticed she was giving him one of those more fond that not _What on earth am I going to do with you?_ looks.

At the moment, he could think of quite a few things.

"Only," she began, feigning concern, "I'm starting to think you're trying to talk me out of it."

"'Fortune favors only the prepared mind.'"

"I don't think I recognize that one."

"Louis Pasteur," Grissom supplied.

Sara nodded. "I was thinking more _Semper paratus_."

"'Always prepared,'" Grissom roughly translated with an approving nod. "Good enough for the Coast Guard. And the Boy Scouts."

"And I do," Sara said, resting a hand on his arm, "know what I'm getting into.

"Trouble, probably, if it involves you. But I can already think of one benefit."

"What's that?"

"You can't beat the company."

xxxxxxx

The _Ishmael_ ship shape and finally ready to set out, Grissom steered Sara towards the ladder to the flybridge.

However her ever-growing fondness for the man she had loved for nearly half her life didn't keep Sara from saying just before she mounted the first rung, "Gil, about the boat. I have just one question."

Uncertain as he was about her query, Grissom patiently waited for her to ask.

"I take it when you first saw it, the first thing that came to mind was 'Call me Ishmael'?"

Grissom only motioned for her to get going. Sara did, laughing as she went.

God, was it good to hear her laugh again even if it proved at his expense.

She was still chuckling when he joined her at the controls.

"So where are we headed, 'O Captain! my Captain!'?" she asked.

To which Grissom shot her a withering glare.

 _What?_ she mouthed.

Her hand found his, fingers intimately intertwined and tease or no, Grissom did have to admit he rather did like the sound of that _we_.

So it was with that old familiar twinkle in his eyes that he replied, "'Second star on the right and straight on till morning.'"

xxxxxxx

True, things ended.

Yet, they began, too.

That night they had begun again.

True, too, things hadn't just magically gone back to normal - however abnormal most people would regard their normal. Neither were naive enough to believe that the last few years hadn't happened, that the two of them didn't have issues and concerns and real problems yet to work through. There was too much hurt and history for that.

Yet the past was past, unable to be undone. Both of them were far more interested in moving on and making things right.

Maybe it wasn't as simple as sailing off into the sunset together, but it had proved a place to begin. And sometimes that was what was needed most.

Endings took care of themselves.

Sara only hoped theirs wouldn't come so soon.

Still smiling slightly at the remembrance, Sara met Catherine's gaze in the mirror.

"You know," she began, both sad and sure, "being together was never the problem.

"Just getting - and staying - there."


	8. Eight: Breadcrumbs

**Eight: Breadcrumbs**

For the second time that Friday, Sara found herself ducking under yellow crime scene tape in order to step into a world already intimately familiar to her.

She and Grissom had stumbled onto the cozy city park their first evening back in Vegas while out taking Hank for his postprandial constitutional. Since then the place had become a habitual of haunt of theirs, a little oasis of all their own.

Until Hannah had invaded it.

This afternoon, cordoned off and swarming with uniforms and black vested investigators as it was, their little piece of quiet proved anything but.

The only thing customary about any of it was Hank curled up beside their usual bench, assiduously ignoring everyone and all the busyness about him.

Except today even his indifference possessed a different timbre. He wasn't relaxed, not like he usually was at his humans' feet. Nor was he napping or even dozing, which Sara knew was what the boxer was usually occupied doing around that hour.

Instead, Hank's head hung low; his body prone to the ground. He waited. Just as Catherine had claimed he was. Hank waited. Nothing else mattered to the dog.

Even Lindsey couldn't manage to coax him from his spot as she knelt to dust the bench for prints.

The sight made Sara's heart hurt all the harder.

However his ears perked up and he did revive a bit at the sight of Sara. While he seemed to struggle to get to his feet, each movement slower and harder than usual, his tail waggled with all its usual enthusiasm. When she knelt to greet him, his kisses, while admittedly markedly subdued, were just as sloppy as ever.

Still, it was nothing like the greeting Hank had first given her only that September before.

It had been rather late in the day by the time Grissom and Sara had finally managed to make it to the dog sitter's. Despite the hour, Grissom assured Sara that Hank wouldn't mind being unceremoniously woken from his nap, particularly if Sara was the one doing the waking.

From the front door, Grissom called "Hank, home."

It seemed to take the boxer an inordinately long time to lumber down the hall. That was until he caught a whiff of Sara.

Instantly, it was as if all the intervening days and weeks and months and years had been no time at all. Hank brightened and bounded towards his long missed mistress with all the energy and enthusiasm of a much younger dog.

His tail wagged the rest of him as Sara knelt down, the better to rub him behind the ears. In return, Hank practically bowled her over with his excitement. He lavished her face in kisses with all the exuberance of a puppy and Sara, her longstanding aversion to saliva notwithstanding, let him.

"I... I missed you, too, buddy," she gasped between licks.

"Okay, Okay," she laughed as she attempted to extricate herself.

At Hank's wanton display of affection, Grissom quipped, "I always knew he liked you better than me."

To which Sara would have rolled her eyes if she hadn't been halfheartedly fending off a further tongue bath.

That afternoon Grissom had found it hard not to be a little jealous - not of Sara's fondness, he wasn't about to begrudge the boxer that - but of how free Hank was with his feelings. That he was thrilled, beyond thrilled, to see Sara again was self-evident. The dog didn't hesitate for a moment to show her just how much.

Love, for Hank, was blissfully simple. He just loved Sara. And was never afraid to show it.

Perhaps, Grissom mused, the old dog could still teach him a thing or two.

Hank had been dogging Sara's footsteps ever since, as if he didn't trust letting her out of his sight. That if he did, she just might vanish again.

As his master had done now.

Sara could practically read the concern in Hank's big brown eyes. She gently stroked him behind the ears.

"Hey, buddy - You okay?" she asked concerned, examining him intently to see if he'd been injured. Hank only nuzzled her in reply.

"I know. I know," Sara tried to comfort him.

Leaning in close she asked, "Do you know what happened to your daddy?"

Hank, covering her in anxious kisses, looked like he wished he knew.

"I know. I know," she said again as he let out a low, long whine.

From the other end of the park bench Lindsey called, "Sara, can you take a look at this?"

However reluctant to leave him there on his own, Sara gave the boxer one last pat on the head. "I'll be right back," she promised.

Resigned, Hank settled back onto the grass to resume his waiting.

Sara hoped he wouldn't have to wait long.

Lindsey Willows indicated the neatly bindled evidence. "We found these here near the dog. _Hank_ ," she hurriedly corrected herself. "Any of it look familiar?"

Sara's eyes roved over the pen, a pair of reading glasses, the Lifestyle section of the _Las Vegas Sun_ folded over to reveal a partially completed crossword and a slim, black hardback book.

It all did.

Just that morning as her coffee had been brewing, Sara had brought in the paper, separated out the puzzle page, neatly folded the newsprint in half and set it along with the pen and Grissom's reading glasses in the middle of the kitchen island where she knew her husband couldn't miss them.

"His?" Lindsey asked after a while.

Sara nodded. "Definitely."

Lindsey didn't seem to know if this was a good thing or not; Sara was too busy lost in thought, more imagining than memory this time.

For she could practically picture him there: Grissom perched on the park bench, reading glasses teetering on the tip of his nose, with a pen in one hand and the puzzle atop his knee, oblivious to the world, as he frequently was when occupied like this.

"Unfortunately," cut in Lindsey, returning Sara to reality, "None of it tells us much."

Sara wasn't entirely sure about that.

"Let me see that puzzle again."

Lindsey passed her the page. Sara smoothed the paper through the plastic in order to get a better look.

A little absently she said, "Did you know the world's first crossword puzzle was published in 1913 in the _New York World_ by Arthur Wynne, Wynne with an _e,_ a British journalist - no relation to the hotel mogul - and was originally called a word-cross?

"At the time people thought the thing a fad that would just blow over, but it stuck.

"It wasn't until 1942 that _The New York Times_ , the eventual pinnacle of puzzle publishers, released its first Sunday puzzle. Now its daily crosswords feature in more than three hundred papers across the country and the world. App's not too bad either.

"We do a lot of crosswords," Sara offered with a self-conscious shrug.

From Grissom's little interrogation room confession, Lindsey figured as much.

"Of course the world's most famous cruciverbalist was Vladimir Nabokov," Sara added.

Talking was easier than thinking right now. It hurt less.

" _Lolita_ Nabokov?" Lindsey asked.

Sara nodded. "Created the first Russian crosswords. He also liked to create chess problems in his spare time."

That sounded a lot like someone else Lindsey had heard quite a lot about over the years.

"Nabokov was a lot more than a famous writer," said Sara. "It turns out his father was Russia's premier criminologist. Which is probably where he got his eye for detail.

"While these days he's mostly known for penning _Lolita_ , Nabokov served as de facto curator of Lepidoptera at Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology. He was the most famous bug man of his day.

"Inspired by the artwork of Maria Sibylla Merian, an Eighteenth Century artist and amateur entomologist, Nabokov drew thousands of butterflies to illustrate his own scientific papers.

"Mostly he specialized in blues, the Polyommatini group from family Lycaenidae. He has his own genus of Karner Blue Nabokovia named for him and several Madaleinea and Psudolucia species are named either for him directly or his literary characters."

At the way Lindsey was practically gaping at her, Sara offered, "I like butterflies."

The French naturalist Marcel Roland had once claimed that butterflies provided _solace for the pain of living_. Sara had frequently found this so.

From Lindsey's near gobsmacked expression, it was probably a good thing Sara had left out the bit about Nabokov being the world's foremost butterfly genitalialist.

Relying not on chromosomes or genetics to distinguish amongst various lepidopteran species, he focused on the microscopic analysis of the chitinoid male sex organ. This lead him to determine that butterfly and moth genitalia differed from species to species in a sort of lock and key system that kept the various species separate to help inhibit interbreeding.

Motioning to the puzzle still in Sara's hand, Lindsey asked, "You thinking Mr. Grissom might have left a clue in the crossword?"

"Maybe not intentionally -"

What Sara was thinking was that Grissom's particular penchant for predictability might just come in handy. He'd become strangely even more increasingly methodical when it came to his puzzle solving as of late, completing them not numerically, but in quadrants: upper left, upper right, lower right, lower left, then finally, finishing off whatever center clues remained so that his neat writing spiraled around the 15x15 square like that of a snail. Today only a handful of squares beneath _whys_ and _whenever_ werestill left blank.

"See how he made it more than three-quarters of the way through the puzzle?" Sara said extending the page so Lindsey could see for herself. "It means he'd been at it nine, maybe ten minutes or so before Hannah..."

From off in the nearby grass where he was combing for any haphazardly discarded trace evidence, Greg piped in, "And you know this how?"

"It's the Friday _Times Crossword,"_ Sara said. _"_ Monday's the easiest of the week. Uninterrupted, it takes him no more than four minutes to finish and that's when he's not in a hurry. Tuesday's takes about six. Wednesday's seven. Friday's twelve. Saturday's fifteen. Sunday's twenty, sometimes a little less."

When Sara looked up from the puzzle, it was to see both Greg and Lindsey regarding her as if she had suddenly sprouted three heads - and a tail.

"You never noticed?" she asked.

Greg simply shook his head. "Yep, married people are weird. Or maybe," he conceded, "it's just you and Grissom."

Sara actually cracked a smile at this. Greg returned to work; she to the puzzle.

"See how in 39 across only half the letters are inked in? There's no way he wouldn't finish an answer once he started, which means Hannah had to catch him at it.

"But you wouldn't catch that unless..."

"You knew Grissom," Greg finished.

Sara nodded. "If I've heard him say it once, I've heard him say it a thousand times: _There's no such thing as an insignificant detail_."

Sara continued to scan the crossword mentally matching answers to clues as she customarily did. That afternoon, there was something oddly soothing about the process.

The puzzle proved relatively easy for a Friday. Yesterday's clue of _whale constellation_ : _Cetus_ wasfar more difficult than most of today's. Of course yesterday Sara hadn't known that Grissom would be soon _MIA_ , the answer to nineteen across. And despite the fact she'd given up any serious drinking more than a decade before, right now she could really use five across: a _stiff drink_.

Sara was absolutely certain Gil Grissom had never heard a _yo mama joke_ in his entire life (the answer to 48 across), hence why she had included it in her earlier text message.

"Looks like he was planning a stop to the grocery store," Lindsey observed.

The neophyte C.S.I. indicated the list scribbled along the left margin of the puzzle. Beside the clue for twenty-two across _Chinese cabbage: bok choy_ , Grissom had indeed scrawled the start of a shopping list.

Its presence immediately reminded Sara of their longstanding no shorthand for grocery list policy, though in fact it was far more his dictate than hers. Grissom never bothered with shorthand. He didn't need to. His hurried handwriting was nearly indecipherable all on its own when he wasn't penning paperwork, crosswords – or love letters.

While Lindsey apparently found it necessary to squint to make out the words, Sara instantly recognized the items: bread, butter, cheese, cream, tomato soup, oranges.

Together they made up the grilled cheese and tomato soup meal that had comprised much of the first food they had shared together aboard the _Ishmael_ two months before.

At how the final _oranges_ had been underlined twice, Sara found she couldn't help but smile slightly, recalling as she did how often her husband had upon peeling the fresh fruit and handing her half, often wore that knowing look of his, as if he meant to remind her she was still the other half of his orange.

No, Grissom hadn't just been planning a stop at the grocery store. As odd and perhaps commonplace the menu, he'd been planning a romantic meal at home for just the two of them.

"Sara? You - You okay?" Lindsey rested a concerned hand on her arm.

Sara, shoving the heartbreaking realization aside, struggled to return herself to the present where her mind and focus needed to be right now.

"Yeah. Yeah. You find anything else?"

"Not yet," Lindsey replied and opting to give Sara a few minutes, went to join Greg in the grass.

Quiet, so as not to be overheard, Lindsey whispered to him, "So whatever Hannah did it was quick, but not instantaneous.

"But what? There's no sign of blood. No sign of a struggle."

"How about injection?" Greg produced a yellow-labeled injector pen. "EpiPen."

"Not your usual park detritus," Lindsey observed.

"Wanna bet tox and trace will come up with something other than epinephrine?" he asked.

Catherine, who'd been occupied on the other side of the park with what must have been a contentious call, irritably clicked off her phone as she strode under the yellow tape.

Sara, intent on trying to reassure Hank - and herself - didn't notice the current lab director's approach. Lindsey, however did, and returned to the bench to gather up what little evidence she and Greg had managed to recover.

Presenting the neatly labeled bindles, Lindsey reported succinctly, "Definitely his."

Recollecting the last time she had seen Grissom with a similar volume, Catherine withdrew the black book from the stack.

"You go through it?" she asked.

Lindsey shook her head. "Not yet."

At that moment Greg called the young woman over to collect the bagged and tagged EpiPen. Meanwhile, Catherine's latex gloved fingers began to flip through the pages.

Unsurprisingly, she found plenty of bug and bee sketches. Though when he'd had occasion to spy beetles and butterflies aboard his boat, Catherine had no clue. But then this was Grissom and he did after all possess one of those irritating near photographic memories.

Water birds soared or swam along the cream colored pages, as did fish. Catherine recognized the whale and shark sketch she had caught him shading in the midst of the Betton bombings two months before.

Her eyes, however, went wide at the next page. No beasts of sky or land or sea, but Sara, Sara sitting ramrod straight in a captain's chair, the veil of her beekeeping hat peeled back from her tense face.

Little more than bare outlines, particularly when it came to her expression, it remained as yet unfinished.

Still, it felt intimate. As if he had been trying to capture that one moment in time, like he _needed_ to capture it.

It was then that Catherine realized the book was like looking into Grissom's head, suddenly seeing into all his thoughts and preoccupations.

Apparently, Sara was often on his mind.

She was there perched on the prow of what must have been Grissom's boat, hair tossed back by the wind and Sara looking far more peaceful than Catherine had ever seen her.

In another picture, Hank lay curled up asleep in the grass. There, too, was an incredibly detailed sketch of an elaborate tree lined fountain. French, Catherine presumed, as must have been the great stone angel hovering above a gravestone.

She found yet another sketch of Sara, not looking the least like the Sara Sidle Catherine knew. This Sara sat before a large open French window with one leg tucked beneath her, her bare foot peeking out from the hem of an only partially buttoned man's dress shirt, which itself only just skimmed the top of her equally bare thighs. With the long sleeves rolled up to the elbows and her hair a mass of disheveled curls, Sara appeared the picture of contentment as she cradled a cup of coffee in her hands.

From the sketch, Catherine had the feeling Grissom found her like this sexy as hell, particularly as it wasn't the only drawing of Sara in one of his shirts. Sara must have made a regular habit of appropriating them. Not that Grissom seemed to mind.

Admittedly though it was strange to see Sara like this the way: the way Grissom did, in the memories he most wanted to keep.

The last sketch however nearly took Catherine's breath away. It, like the beekeeping one, remained largely incomplete; little more than a thin-lined pencil sketch, as yet unshaded.

In it, Sara lay curled up asleep in bed, her dark curls haloed against the pillow, her wedding ring bedecked hand plain. As was the fact that barebacked as she was, she was also completely naked beneath the sheets.

The drawing was intimate, achingly intimate, that and Grissom's love for her plain in every pencil stroke.

Seeing this, Catherine made a snap decision. There was not a single thing in this book germane to their investigation. Not one page had anything to do with Hannah. More than enough of Grissom and Sara's life had already been put on display.

This, this was private and Catherine intended to keep it that way.

Sans evidence bag, she slipped the book into her jacket pocket.

If Lindsey, returning bagged EpiPen now in hand, had noticed, she made no comment.

"I'll take that," Catherine said, snagging the bag from her daughter. "And all the rest of it back to the lab. Hank, too.

"Sara -"

As if just registering Catherine's presence, Sara's head turned towards her.

"We already have a vet on the way to look him over."

While Hank probably wouldn't be thrilled at the prospect of being poked and prodded, Sara appeared relieved and grateful.

To Greg and Lindsey, Catherine said, handing Lindsey the warrant, "When you two are finished up here, Ecklie wants you to head to Hannah's apartment.

"Sara, he needs you back at P.D.. Hannah says she won't talk to anyone but you."

To which Sara scoffed. "It's a clear case of conflict of interest and she knows it."

"I don't like it either," agreed Catherine. "Neither does Ecklie. But you're our in for better or worse."

"Conrad's suddenly singing a different tune."

"The game changes, the rules change with them," Catherine shrugged. Then more sure she said, "There's just too much at stake."

Meeting Sara's gaze she took a deep breath before plunging pragmatically on with: "Officially, you're off this case. You touch nothing. You process nothing. You're not even here -"

"If you think I'm just going to sit around waiting -" Sara protested.

Catherine continued as if Sara hadn't interrupted. "Unofficially: eyes, no hands."

Immediately grasping what Catherine was telling her, Sara calmed.

"Otherwise," Catherine continued, "the defense will be all over us at trial and -"

Sara nodded knowingly. "And she walks - Again."

xxxxxxx

Back in Sara's apartment, Conrad Ecklie caught up with his own daughter just as she was about to head back to the lab.

Clicking her scene case shut, Morgan reported, "Nothing. No fingerprints. No shoe prints. No fibers. No trace.

"Big surprise there. According to Sara, Hannah knows our techniques as well as we do."

"If Grissom's last location was the park, it means she must have come directly here," said Ecklie. "He was probably out there in the car while she was in here."

Morgan had to agree. "She had the keys. In and out. She wouldn't have even needed five minutes."

"If that."

"But why the apartment?" Morgan asked. "Why didn't she just send the phone to the lab?"

"Power," Ecklie replied. "The phone - the apartment - the park. It's all just a show of how far she can penetrate their personal spaces."

 _Ouch_ , Morgan thought.

"We have any proof of life?" she asked.

"No. And she's made no demands."

xxxxxxx

From the rear seat of the SUV, where she sat with Hank curled up, his head in her lap, Sara, registering nothing beyond the glass, absently stroked his back as she stared out the side window.

The same phrase ran on repeat in her head: _The last time you saw him -_

Catherine certainly hadn't meant anything by it when she had asked her _And that was the last time you saw him?_ The words were pure protocol, routine in the extreme. Sara, herself, had asked them more times than she could count, never once realizing what they might mean to those whom she was asking.

She knew now.

 _The last time -_

Sara recalled that morning, early, but bright out, with thin strips of light threading through the blinds. Grissom warm in the bed beside her. The sound of the phone invading what had been a deep, profoundly peaceful sleep. Her slipping out of bed to answer the call and then padding into the bathroom to change into the spare set of clothes she'd always kept there.

Dressed and ready to go, Sara had returned to the bedroom, for what precisely she couldn't quite currently remember. Maybe she had forgotten something or maybe that thought had been nothing more than a pretext.

Easing the door open, she tiptoed in. However quiet she may have attempted to be, Hank lifted his head to shoot her a doleful, reproving sort of glare before settling back down. Her husband, on the other hand, had managed during her brief absence not only to migrate to her side of the bed, but had also thoroughly cocooned himself in the covers. Not that Sara could blame him for the former. There was just something reassuring about the warmth and smell of him in the sheets. Him burrowed beneath the blankets however was purely _de rigueur_ , always had been.

Even though Sara knew she was expected at a crime scene, the sight, unused as she still was to having him back in her - or rather their - bed again, gave her pause.

She wasn't sure she would ever get used to it. Over the past few months, the wonder of the everyday had yet to wear away.

The buzz at her hip however startled her back into motion: the location of her 419.

Afraid the noise might have disturbed him, Sara held her breath for a moment, only to let out a sigh of relief when she found it hadn't.

Still, duty called.

Thus she remained only long enough to creep to the bedside and bend to press a kiss into his sleep and sex mussed hair.

Thankfully, he stirred only long enough for the twitch of a grin to tug at his cheek before he sunk deeper into slumber - and snoring.

At which it was hard to determine who snored the louder: dog or master.

As ever amused at this, Sara had, grinning ear to ear; proceeded to leave her husband a text as she disappeared out the door.

If Sara had known that morning, known what she knew now, she wouldn't have worried so much about waking him. She would have woken him, kissed him awake, made sure to tell him she loved him rather than urging him to go back to sleep.

Heck, had she known, she would never have picked up that damn phone.

They could have slept in a little longer, then lingered a lot longer in bed. Shared a shower and a quiet breakfast before spending the morning in the park. He could have quizzed her over crossword clues. And then -

The day could have held any number of possibilities. It probably would have passed in that thoroughly uneventful way that frequently proved their favorite: nothing special and yet special all the same.

But all the shoulda, woulda and couldas in the world couldn't change the fact that the day had turned out far more frightening. That Sara had gone and now Grissom was gone who knew where after who knew what had happened. That the only person who could tell them was a sick and twisted wisp of a young woman who for all of her brilliance had never stopped being a twelve year old girl.

Sara steeled herself. No, that morning wouldn't be the last time. She wasn't ready for it to be the last time. She certainly wasn't ready to say good-bye. Not now. Not after everything. Not after they'd finally found their way back to each other again.

Sure, she had said those words to him back in the lab hallway two months previously. Meant them then, too, desperate as she had been to put an end to the ache, though it had further broken her heart to do it.

They'd never been good at good-byes, either of them, always awkward instead and always with too much left unsaid between them. Walking away from Grissom that day had been hard, necessary but hard.

But now, no. Not _good-bye_. Not _last_.

Sensing Sara's disquiet, Hank nuzzled her hand.

"It's okay," she murmured, stroking him behind the ears.

Neither looked like they believed it.


	9. Nine: Cross Examinations

**Nine: Cross Examinations**

"Sara -" Catherine began, resting a cautionary hand on Sara's shoulder as Sara's own fingers closed about the handle to the interrogation room door.

"Be careful," she warned. "That girl's kryptonite and you know it."

Sara only nodded and strode inside.

Hannah West practically beamed as Sara Sidle took the seat across from her.

"And here I'd heard you were busy," the young woman cooed. "Whatever changed your mind?"

Hannah's airy mock innocent act wasn't going to work on Sara.

Nor was there any way Sara was going to let Hannah push her buttons. Not this time.

Coolly, Sara intoned, "Not nearly as busy as you."

From the observation room next door, Catherine joined Conrad Ecklie at the glass.

"Definitely him. Definitely taken," came Catherine's short, but nowhere near sweet, succinct summation of the evidence so far.

Without removing his gaze from the goings on, Ecklie asked, "We calling in the Feds?"

Sheriff or no, Conrad Ecklie opted to defer to Catherine's time and experience with the Bureau. Frequently kidnapping technically fell under their purview after all.

Catherine shook her head. "Would take too long. And they don't know Hannah. Sara does.

"Anyway, I doubt Hannah will play any other way."

"But then -" Sara was saying back in the interrogation room, "that was the whole point of all of this. To keep us busy."

Hannah leant forward. "How about a little quid pro quo? You answer my questions; I'll answer yours."

Immediately, Sara rose to go. "I've told you before: I'm done playing games with you, Hannah. I've been done."

"It's not a game."

"Really?" Sara couldn't keep the incredulity out of her voice. "'Cause it looks like same crap different day to me."

"Not this time."

Sara struggled to keep her breathing regular, her voice even, her hands steady, her face as placid as a mask.

Panic – Rage - Fury. None of these would help get her husband back. She had to stay calm; focused.

If she didn't -

Sara didn't want to complete that thought - wouldn't complete that thought.

How many times in a single day would she have to remind herself to breathe, just breathe? she wondered, particularly as not even all her years of yoga could seem to still the thumping in her chest or the storm in her stomach.

There would be time for anger; tears later. Now was the time to focus, to do her job as if Grissom's life - their life - depended on it.

Which it did.

Sara sat.

"What is it then?" she asked.

Hannah considered this.

"More - more like a conundrum. In the original sense of the word.

"You like words. I know your husband does. _New York Times Crossword_ in pen every morning, right?"

Hannah let this piece of knowing slowly sink in for moment before giving Sara a smug sort of smile. "That's what we're here to talk about, isn't it, Sara?

"Your husband?"

As Sara was only just starting to grow accustomed to hearing Grissom described that way again, she flinched at the word in Hannah's mouth wielded like the weapon the young woman certainly intended it to be.

In the observation room, Ecklie bent towards Catherine. "Since when is a suspect so eager to talk?"

"Hannah's not your usual suspect."

Ecklie rather reluctantly had to agree. "She's careful, too. There's not one thing she's said that could be used against her in a court of law."

Then in an even lower, more confidential tone he added, "Too bad you're not still F.B.I.."

"If you're thinking what I'm thinking, you're thinking C.I.A..

"It almost makes you miss the old Vegas crime bosses," Catherine sighed. "They could always get a guy to talk.

"Our hands are tied," she said with a rueful shake of the head. "We can't do a damn thing but continue to hold her. And she knows it."

Across the table from Hannah, Sara crossed her arms. Her eyes narrowed and her jaw set.

 _Control._

 _Breathe._

 _Breathe._

 _Don't let her -_

 _Can't let her -_

He needed her to stay calm and in control. To not lose her temper. And Sara would - for Grissom. She would do anything she could for him. She always would. Always had.

Even if this was worse, far worse than having to sit across the table from Heather Kessler and beg the former dominatrix to tell her anything, anything at all that might help them locate the then mystery bomber fixated on her ex.

Hannah, however the known quantity, did indeed prove worse, far worse.

Betton's threat had been hard enough, having Grissom actually taken -

Hannah wasn't playing. Despite her blasé performance, she was as deadly serious as ever - and just as deadly.

With another deep breath, Sara steeled herself. "My marriage has nothing to do -"

"You know," Hannah interrupted, "I wondered about the two of you. Him always gone. You always here. Month after month.

"Not exactly a recipe for wedded bliss. I suppose the divorce was inevitable."

"I don't know how Sara does it," Catherine murmured, admiring Sara's sudden show of self-control. "If it were me, I'd want nothing more than to reach across the table and -"

Sara did want nothing more than to lunge across that table.

She might want to rage and roar, to shake some sense into the young woman or some answers out of her, to do something - _anything_ \- to wipe that self-satisfied smile from her simpering face.

Of course all any of that would accomplish would be to play into Hannah's hands. Sara wasn't about to give the girl that satisfaction.

"And yet - " Hannah turned her full knowing gaze on Sara. "You love him."

This wasn't a question.

"And he loves you."

Neither was this.

"It's all over you both. The phone calls, the e-mails, the texts, they're sweet really," Hannah purred insincere as ever.

"But there's nothing like seeing the two of you together when you don't think anyone else is watching."

At this, an involuntary shiver slithered down Sara's spine.

With her head cocked to one side, Hannah gave Sara an overly long once over.

"I do have to admit you're looking a lot better these days," she said. "Not nearly so sad.

"Marriage suits you much better than divorce."

Atop the table, Sara's fists clenched. The last thing she needed was Hannah's condescending approbation.

Yet she wasn't about to let the girl get the best of her. Not a third time. And not with so much at stake.

Hannah had him. _Knew._ The _how_ of it all didn't matter much at the moment. The _why_ even less. It was the question of _where_ that consumed Sara.

No matter how hard it proved to outfox a homicidal genius who had had years to prepare, Sara had to find a way to make her tell.

Too bad Grissom was always the far better chess player - poker, too. Either adeptness would really come in handy right about now.

Sara simply had to find a way to break Hannah before Hannah succeeded in breaking her. Even if there was nothing simple about it.

Sara had to find some way, any way, to regain the upper hand in their conversation.

Perhaps a change of subject was in order.

"This isn't the first day of school, Hannah," Sara insisted even more icily. "So how about we skip the whole _This is how I spent my summer vacation_ routine?"

"And get straight to business?" Hannah actually smiled. "This mean you're actually charging me with something or are we still just talking?"

"You're the one who wanted to talk. So talk."

Only Hannah didn't. Instead, she sat back in her chair, self-assured and secure.

"Look," Sara said, tapping the file folder in front of her, "we've got three bodies at three different crime scenes. There's only one problem. They aren't crime scenes. Not conventionally speaking.

"The _victims_ were already dead. Long dead."

One by one, Sara set out a series of scene photos from that morning.

"Look familiar? They did to me."

Next, she placed a row of older photos beneath the first.

"Hard to tell the difference, isn't it?" Sara asked.

"Except this last one."

Deliberately, Sara laid the single shot of Marlon West hung dead in his jail cell, not adjacent to the several shots of the hanged man Greg and Morgan had discovered that day at the Administration and Justice Building, but rather directly in front of Hannah.

"Not quite up to your usual standards," Sara said. "But then you weren't there, Hannah. You were never there.

"You just walked away and left Marlon to die."

In her seat, Hannah shifted almost imperceptibly. Sara pressed harder.

"Ironic, isn't it, Hannah? You could save Marlon from everyone, even himself.

"Turns out the one person - the only person - you couldn't save him from was you.

"But then if you couldn't have him -"

Sara let her last statement hang there.

"It's been hard, hasn't it, Hannah?" she continued after a while. "These last several years for you, too.

"Knowing Marlon chose death over you."

Hannah's eyes flashed, but only for an instant.

Then all too swiftly that ever-collected mask of hers slid back into place.

"I think I'll take that lawyer now."

xxxxxxx

Sara slammed the door behind her.

"Damn! Damn! Damn!"

Catherine rushed out to meet her.

"Sara -"

Caught cursing, Sara spun.

Seeing who it was, she closed her eyes and sighed as she slumped against one wall.

However reluctantly she admitted, "She winds me up worse than Lady Heather. Always has."

"You did fine," Catherine assured her. "Better than fine."

"I got nothing. _Nothing_. I thought if I pushed hard enough she might -"

"She never had any intention of giving you anything. She just wanted to watch you squirm. And you didn't."

"Except that doesn't get us any closer to -"

"Come on," Catherine urged, taking Sara by the elbow, "Hank's waiting."

xxxxxxx

As lost in thought and worry as Sara was, perhaps it had been a good idea that Catherine had insisted on ushering her through the lab to one of the evidence processing rooms.

Sara didn't notice Mandy Webster busy dusting the pen and paper they had earlier collected for prints. She didn't see each print pull up Grissom's old lab photograph and profile in AFIS.

Nor did she take in Dave Hodges impatiently hovering over Henry Andrews' shoulder as the DNA/Tox tech swabbed both the inside and out of the EpiPen for DNA.

Or Henry's terse: "You're standing there isn't going to make the process go any faster, Hodges."

Hodges, about to snipe in reply, instead catching sight of Sara, uncharacteristically demurred.

The pale, intent looks both she and Catherine wore instantly sobered them both.

Conrad Ecklie ducked into a doorway to let the two women pass, his barked commands into his cell booming down the hall.

"I want their pictures plastered all over the news. I don't care if you have to cut into programming.

"Someone, somewhere had to have seen something."

xxxxxxx

Catherine waited outside all the while watching Sara gently restrain an unhappy Hank as the on-call vet proceeded to take blood and give the boxer a thorough examination.

Hank wasn't the only one.

Still, Sara, Catherine could see, tried to put on a brave front for the dog.

Continuously murmuring reassurances into his ear, she lavished Hank with all the attention he could tolerate. Catherine wondered whom they were more meant to comfort, Hank or herself.

It didn't seem to be working in any case.

When the vet finally finished pulled a dog treat from her pocket, Hank ignored her and it completely. Instead, with a half-sigh, half-whine, he sank belly flat onto the tabletop, the picture of dejection.

Sara didn't seem all that far from wanting to join him.

From out of nowhere, Archie Johnson barreled past Catherine into the room.

"Sara -" he gasped, near breathless. "You're going to want to see this."

xxxxxxx

Having however reluctantly left Hank (with one final rub behind the ears and a whispered, "Robin will take good care of you until your daddy comes home") in the vet's more than capable care until the dog sitter could get there, Sara joined Archie in A.V.. Catherine arrived right behind them.

A single cell phone sat on the tabletop already hooked up to the lab monitors.

"Hannah's?" Catherine asked.

"Lindsey just dropped it off," Archie replied.

Heavy on the sarcasm Sara quipped, "A present. How nice."

For if Hannah had left as much as a stray fingernail clipping in her apartment, she meant for it to be found. Hannah didn't make mistakes. Certainly not stupid ones like leaving her cell behind.

Sara was starting to get another of her bad feelings.

Archie's "Didn't take long to go through it. It's clean and I mean _clean_ ," did little to reassure her.

Nor did his: "Except for this."

Clicking on Photos, Archie pulled up the single albumlabeled _Sara_. Two dozen thumbnails swiftly filled the monitor.

"Exactly 337 pictures. Less than 500 MB worth on a 32 GB device."

"And nothing else?"

Both Sara and Catherine found this odd.

Archie ticked off his reply. "No apps beyond factory standard. No call time logged. No cellular data usage. No cloud storage. No browser history. No text or iMessages.

"Nothing but pics."

"That's an awful lot of expense to go to for a slide show," observed Catherine.

Sara had the sinking feeling Hannah regarded it as money well spent.

"You been through them all?" Catherine asked.

Archie shook his head. "Clicked on a few at random. Just to make sure there weren't any of... well, wherever she took Grissom. They're all just snapshots."

To Sara he said, "I thought you'd want to go through them yourself. It's your name on the album."

Sara only nodded.

"I set it up so the photos run as a slide show. That way you don't have to keep swiping through them," Archie explained as he clicked the play triangle. "You can pause it at any time."

Slowly, picture after picture began to dissolve one into another.

Some were grainy long shots; others crystal clear close-ups. All were of Sara. Sara at various crime scenes, ever dressed in her black vest and looking serious and purposeful. A heavy-eyed, leaden limbed, weary and reluctant Sara leaving the lab at the end of various shifts. A slump shouldered still tired Sara getting into her car to leave her apartment after having been called in at all hours of the day and night.

Others were more of the personal variety. Sara entering the grocery store. Sara browsing the farmers' markets at Garden Park, Bruce Trent Park or Floyd Lamb. Sara exiting various takeout restaurants, bag in hand.

There were few smiles. Mostly, Sara looked worn out.

 _Sad_ , as Hannah would have regarded it.

In any case, it appeared as if a perpetual black cloud seemed to hover over Sara Sidle wherever she went.

Appalled, Archie lamented, "And I thought the paparazzi were bad."

Then he added, "Seems like she always knew where to find you."

Then as if grasping how, he said, "She did. Phone clone..."

"And locator service," finished Sara knowingly.

Catherine sighed, "Hannah must have hidden in plain sight. She's been watching you for months."

"Years," Sara corrected.

Setting out to test her suspicions, she motioned to the mouse. "May I?" she asked.

Archie having scooted his chair back to give her better access, Sara returned the show to the beginning to manually flip through the images. She didn't need Archie to show her how to access the metadata in order to check the date stamps. She only needed to check her left hand ring finger.

With a pang, Sara realized that several of the earliest images predated the divorce.

"Definitely years," she said.

Sara set the show to resume where they had left off.

"That's patience," Catherine begrudgingly admitted.

"That's obsession."

Though it wasn't the pictures of her on her own that left Sara feeling violated. Those were the next set far more recent. The ones of her and Grissom back in Vegas again.

"Hannah seems to have stepped up her surveillance over the last couple of days. These are all from this week," Sara explained.

They were ordinary photos, from ordinary life. The two of them standing close. Them walking hand-in-hand or arm-in-arm, talking, laughing, living.

Sara nearly smiled at the sight. Now that she thought about it, they did seem to hold hands more often these days, sometimes at her encouragement; sometimes at his, both seeming to thrill at the other beneath their fingers.

She found, too, she rather liked the way Grissom's hand seemed to instinctively settle at the small of her back when they stood close, as if he couldn't get enough of the feel of her. In truth, he couldn't. She couldn't either.

It wasn't as if they had suddenly adopted lavish public displays of affection. Both tended to regard such things as private, but these days neither had any desire to hide their affection.

Each gave into the need to be close. After too long apart and neither quite willing or wanting to readily relinquish the comfort of contact, they sat close, stood close, snuggled close, slept close. They lingered longer together - out, at home, in bed and relished the simple pleasure of simply being together again.

Yet it seemed that even in a few short months they had begun to take that fact for granted: that they were together now and nothing could change that fact.

Except for a revenge-bent barely legal homicidal genius.

Thus lost in her own thoughts, Sara almost missed Archie's horrified gasp of "She's been watching both of you."

Ultimately, Sara found she wasn't surprised. Hannah had told her so herself:

 _There's nothing like seeing the two of you together when you don't think anyone is watching..._

Only Hannah had been watching.

Sara should have known better, should have realized after Natalie that their life wasn't private. Not anymore. Not really. But not even Natalie Davis had invaded their privacy like this.

Certain cultures once, as some still did, believed that cameras could steal a person's soul. It was hard not to scoff, not to regard such thinking as superstitious nonsense. Though in some ways wasn't that exactly what Hannah had done? Not stolen their souls, nothing near as metaphysical as that, but stolen pieces of their personal lives without permission.

And not only had the girl brutally invaded their privacy, she made sure Sara knew what she had done. Hence the phone and all its photo files.

At this, Sara blanched if possible even paler.

Beside her, Catherine murmured, "Archie, why don't you go take a break for a few minutes?"

Archie had seen enough. Heck, Catherine had seen enough.

It didn't matter that the photos were ordinary, mundane. They were far too intimate a show and there had been enough eyes and hands all over Sara and Grissom's lives that day.

While more direct order rather than request, Archie Johnson slid back his chair without protest and rose. At the door he paused to ask, "Can I bring you guys back anything? Coffee? Tea?"

 _Grissom, just Grissom back_ , Sara thought, but did not say. Catherine answered for her anyway.

"Thanks. We're good here."

As Catherine nudged Sara into Archie's vacated seat, Sara could sense her friend wanted to say something. Sara supposed Grissom wasn't the only one who ever ended up at a loss for words.

Letting out a long breath, Sara settled into the chair and returned her gaze to the screen.

"It's fine," she insisted. " _Really_."

It wasn't.

And they both knew it.

Still, Sara began to silently flip through the pictures again.

There were several series of the whole family: Grissom, Sara and Hank out for a walk together, Hank lumbering happily along on his leash while his two humans held hands, talking animatedly as they went. Then the two of them sat snuggled close on a park bench with the boxer asleep at their feet, the same park bench where they'd found Grissom's things and Hank dejectedly waiting that afternoon.

But in the photos there were only grins. Laugh lines were just that again.

Catherine hadn't seen either look so completely content in ages as they did as together they poured over a crossword puzzle.

Next, there was more dog walking together. Grocery shopping together. The two of them wrestling packing supplies into Sara's Prius together.

In one series, right outside of the lab, Sara leaned in the driver's side of said Prius. Catherine had a pretty good idea what for.

Hannah had been right about one thing: the two of them really were sweet together, heart-achingly sweet, all things considered.

It was impossible to miss their joy, as Ray Langston had once identified it. Catherine had to agree. It was joy between them, them a newly married couple. Plainly madly in love in their own quiet way, the two equally plainly adored one another.

They looked happy.

It was good to see. And heartbreaking all at once.

Catherine figured those two never had stopped loving each other. Probably neither had the least clue how.

At least they had finally managed to get out of their own way and just accept that fact - and each other.

No, being together definitely was never the problem.

In this Catherine was happy for them. Glad too, Grissom hadn't turned out to be some lonely workaholic after all. Though her warmth at the sight of them together, just ordinarily together, chilled when tempered by her own fear. Catherine knew what it was like to love and lose. She didn't want that for Sara.

"Hmm..." murmured Sara, as she and Catherine continued to watch the pictures fade one into another.

Catherine noticed it, too.

These were all of Grissom. Only Grissom.

"It seems she shifted her attention away from you -"

"To Gil," Sara agreed, her voice tight with worry.

"Well, at least we know how she knew to pick the park," Catherine said, as a series of snaps featured Grissom and Hank at the park sans Sara this time.

But it was Catherine's turn to be caught up short when pictures from the park gave way to those featuring Grissom in a front yard with a lanky, dark-skinned, dark-haired, fair-eyed boy: Eli, Warrick Brown's son.

There was just no mistaking his father's roguish grin.

Though the kid was still at that awkward phase, Catherine had no doubt Eli would grow up to be a heartbreaker - just like his daddy.

"That boy never does stop growing," Catherine sighed. "But what on earth are they..."

"Shooting off Mentos rockets," Sara supplied with a fond shake of the head.

 _Boys and blowing things up._

"I told you he brought him a chemistry set, too?"

"Yep, the Grissom gift for all occasions," Catherine smirked again.

"Could have been crickets. Or cockroaches," Sara suggested.

"Yeah, Tina would just really love that."

Only their momentary levity proved to be just that.

The next few pictures made certain of that.

"They're from this morning," Sara gasped. "He hasn't worn those clothes any other day this week. Or his hat."

 _That damn hat_ , Sara rued. That damn straw hat he'd had forever and would have forever.

Although said forever might just end today.

Sara shoved that thought away.

She didn't think they could get any worse - the photos. Worse than seeing him much as she had earlier imagined him: Grissom there on the park bench, pen in hand, puzzle atop his knee, his reading glasses slipping towards the ends of his nose in the winsome way they always did.

And he was oblivious.

He didn't know. Couldn't know how much his life was about to change in only a few moments.

But it was the following photo that hit Sara like a blow: Grissom and Hank curled up together fast asleep.

"She's... She's been in your house?" Catherine stammered.

"No," said Sara certainly. "I took that one. Years ago."

It was a digital copy of her favorite photograph, the one Sara had long kept framed by her side of the bed during all that time she and Grissom had still been married, but spent most of every month apart; one of the few pictures she hadn't boxed up with the rest after she had moved out, only secreted into the Costa Rican puzzle box Grissom had given her for Christmas years before.

It was her idea of home, the reason why she had kept the picture, why she had recently uploaded it to her phone.

Reflected on A.V.'s giant screen, it recalled all Sara had to lose.

That Hannah had that photo felt more intrusive than all the rest.

" _Sara_ -"

But before Catherine could find the words or Sara any sort of reply, Lindsey Willows popped her head in the door.

"Hey, Mom, you got a second?"

Only at catching sight of both women's faces, the young woman's eagerness immediately faltered. Some expressions were far worse than tears.

"I... uh... I can come back..."

Sara hurriedly shook her head. "No, it's fine."

Then to Catherine, she said, "It's okay, I'll just finish up here."

Catherine wanted to ask if Sara was sure, but knew better.

Instead, she left her with the last handful of photographs.

You wouldn't know it from looking at them, but they were wedding pictures, the self same wedding photos from the week before which both Grissom and Sara had found waiting in their email inboxes that Saturday morning after, with a brief congratulatory note from the Captain attached.

In truth, neither Grissom nor Sara had even realized the images had been taken at the time. Of course they'd been a little busy and more than a little preoccupied with each other. As they hadn't even thought of having pictures done, the Captain's thoughtful gesture had pleased them both.

The wedding, itself, hadn't been fancy or grand. No flowers or finery. No rice or confetti. No cake or champagne toasts. No music or fanfare or fuss. But those weren't the things that mattered anyway. Not nearly as much as the new promises they both looked forward to spending the rest of their lives attempting to keep.

After all, _getting married_ wasn't the important part, it was the _being married_ that mattered.

So they came as they were. Just themselves.

Sara didn't wear a dress; Grissom didn't wear a tie. Rather Sara came in a pair of black jeans topped with a cobalt colored cable knit fisherman's sweater, her mass of curls done up in a loose ponytail which left a few stray strands to dance about her neck.

Beneath his jacket (but then who would Gil Grissom be without his jacket), Grissom wore a French blue hued oxford, the one that wasn't so secretly Sara's favorite, as it had always brought out the color of his eyes, a few buttons still undone at the throat.

The two of them stood at the prow of a boat, not of Grissom's _Ishmael,_ as he had readily surrendered the keys to the ship a few days before to the research team they'd been working with over the last few weeks, but the Captain's own pride and joy _Hook, Line and Sinker_.

The Captain (the only name he ever did go by) did a lot of weddings on the water, although very few at the end of November, too cool for most people's tastes as it was.

Turns out the old sea dog was rather the hopeless romantic. He loved seeing people on one of the happiest days of their lives. Sara, who had spent most of her life encountering people on their worst, thought the good captain just might be onto something.

She and Grissom had married again in the remains of the day, under that same light they had last come back together in, in that in between of day and dark, when all the world blazed awash in gilded glow and the city had only just begun to twinkle into constellations of its own.

Sunset was their time, had been ever since that September. No matter how busy they became, they made sure to take the time to savor that particular time of day.

A reminder of beginnings and of a life yet to come, it seemed particularly apt for a wedding.

In the photograph, the two of them faced each other, standing close, her hand on his cheek, the wedding band bright on Sara's ring finger, the two of them both beaming in that moment just before leaning in for another kiss and looking for all the world as if all the world didn't matter. That it was just them that day.

And it had been.

Hence why neither had registered the photos being taken.

Sara toggled between it and the next few pictures and softly, sadly smiled.

Not a single trace of the nerves Gil Grissom had been strangely displaying only moments before remained in those bright eyes and ever-brighter grin of his.

It was hard to imagine from the pictures that he had once again given that lower lip of his a nervous chew and had had to give his throat one last restless cough.

Or that his usually sure and steady voice had stammered slightly as he pulled a piece of paper from his pocket.

"I... I wanted to get this just right," he offered by way of explanation. "These words I will admit to taking - But then you were the one who told me 'Talent borrows, genius steals.'"

While it had actually been Oscar Wilde who had originally said as much, Sara rather fondly let the correction drop. What would a moment be without one of Grissom's quotations? They were, after all, part of his charm.

Only this particular quote left Sara the one speechless.

"I hereby give myself. I love you. You are the

only being whom I can love absolutely with

my complete self, with all my flesh and

mind and heart. You are my mate, my perfect

partner and I am yours. ... It was a marvel

that we ever met. It is some kind of divine

luck that we are together now. We must

never, never part..."

"Iris Murdock," he concluded with a self-deprecating shrug.

Perhaps if Sara had managed to regain the power of speech she would have pronounced it beautiful. For it was. Even more so as she knew Grissom meant every word.

Only he wasn't finished just yet.

Carefully refolding the paper and slipping it back into his coat, he took a deep breath.

"Sara," he began, meeting her eyes again.

This time his words were his and his alone:

"I love you. I do.

"We both know I can't promise things will be easy. They never have been yet.

"But this I can and do promise: No matter what may come, wherever this life may take us, I will be there with you.

"Always.

"I promise, too, to cherish you for all the wonder that you are. To care for you. Comfort you.

"To do my best - however imperfect that may prove - to work with you to build this life of ours together.

"But most of all, I promise to love you: mind, body, heart and soul.

"Always, I do."

What could Sara have ever possibly said to that?

Knowing all too well as she did that there were times in this life when words were definitely overrated, Sara opted instead to kiss him long and lovingly on the lips by way of reply.

Grissom readily returned the kiss with even greater fervor, causing the Captain to quip, "I guess I won't have to tell you to 'kiss the bride.'"

That moment right after; the moment just before their second kiss as husband and wife, that's what the Captain had managed to capture, that moment and all the raw, unadorned happiness it contained.

Everything Sara Sidle knew she just might be all too soon about to lose.

xxxxxxx

Out in the hallway, Lindsey Willows tugged her mother into a corner.

"I was just reviewing the footage from Sara's interrogation with Hannah and noticed something."

"During the interrogation?"

Catherine, having herself been on the other side of the glass in the observation room, couldn't recall noticing anything odd. Well, not anything that odd when it came to Hannah West.

"Yes, but more the before and after.

"One of the deputies turned the camera on before Sara entered. I think he expected her to enter sooner as there were a few minutes of just Hannah on the tape."

Catherine still wasn't getting what her daughter was trying to tell her.

"Here, watch," Lindsey held up her iPad for Catherine to see. "I sped it up a little."

At five times normal rate, the motion came out a blur, but the blur proved far easier to catch. Hannah repeatedly, almost compulsively, checked the watch at her wrist, an act which wasn't all that strange as nobody liked to be kept waiting.

But the action somehow felt more like calculation rather than frustration, unaccompanied as it was with the usual finger tapping or leg jiggling of typical impatience.

More disturbing was the ever-growing pleased grin on the young woman's face as she periodically took in the time once Sara had left the room.

She looked satisfied. Far too satisfied for her or Sara and Grissom's own good.

"Hannah's a clock watcher," observed Catherine.

"Exactly. Which means whatever she's done, it's somehow time dependent."

"Except," said Catherine sadly, "with her not talking, there's no way to know what, or just how much time we've got left."

xxxxxxx

 _Cold._

Was the first word that flickered into being as the darkness slowly began to fade.

 _Cold._

Then another sensation joined the chill: burning.

It was like fire and ice all at once and Gil Grissom gasped as his eyes flashed wide in the deep dark.

His breath blossomed into clouds about his fabric-draped face; his ragged breathing labored, the only sound apart from the low distant repetitive machine hum and the thundering of his own heart in his ears.

Naked, he was naked beneath the thin, stiff sheet.

No wonder all his brain could claim was cold.

It seemed to take what seemed to him to be an inordinately long amount of time for him to feel his fingers, to recall his toes. Both seemed far, so very far from him.

When he attempted to bring them closer, he found he could maneuver his hands and feet no further than a little more than nine inches, roughly the allowance of a pair of standard-issue police handcuffs. Which, his just starting to thaw back into some measure of comprehension mind thought explained the bitter bite into his wrists and ankles each time he tried to move.

So he was cuffed. And on a gurney, he deduced from the metallic way what lay beneath him sapped whatever heat remained from his bare skin.

He was butterflied, cuffed to a gurney in some sort of freezer.

In that moment he knew, he knew he'd been left that way to die.


	10. Ten: Following the Evidence

**Ten: Following the Evidence**

"So what do we know?" Catherine Willows asked the group collected about the lab table.

"His last text was at 7:34 this morning," said Morgan. "They picked up Hannah around noon. That leaves what? Nearly four and a half hours to pick up Grissom, drop off his phone at the house and then stash him who knows where before ditching whatever car she's been using.

"All with plenty of time to spare to spend forty minutes calmly sipping a latte at her local Starbucks."

"Vegas isn't that big," Greg had to concede. "Even an hour can be an eternity if you're a local and you know what you're doing."

"Plus, with yesterday's holiday, traffic's bound to be lighter," Lindsey added. "As long as you avoid the Black Friday shoppers."

"Hannah was born and raised here," said Catherine. "She'd know the ins and outs better than anyone. Which means she could have taken him anywhere."

Which was not a promising thought. Las Vegas and its surrounding environs were famous for places for keeping people and things you wanted to keep hidden hidden: old abandoned mine shafts, miles of storage facilities, half completed construction sites, vacant foreclosed homes - any and all perfect places and harder than heck to trace.

"Still," said Morgan, "it was a pretty brazen move. Taking him out of the park like that."

"At that hour the park was probably empty. Too late for runners or dog walkers; too early for kids," Lindsey countered.

"But Grissom's too smart to just go with her," Greg protested. "She had to have incapacitated him somehow. Epinephrine wouldn't do that."

"We can answer that," chimed in Hodges as he and Henry strode into the room file folders in hand.

"It may look like an EpiPen, work like an EpiPen. Not an EpiPen. No epinephrine," Henry supplied.

"Big surprise," grumbled Greg.

Henry ignored this. "Tox came up negative for narcotics, hypnotics, barbiturates, opiates and hallucinogens. No sign of any known street drugs."

"Please," implored Catherine, "tell me Hannah's not cooking up her own concoctions."

"She is a chemistry post doc," said Morgan.

"Trace wasn't chemical," Henry replied. " _Bio_ chemical. Came back positive for heavy proteins."

"Which FTIR identified as tamapin, noxiustoxin and maurotoxin," Hodges piped in helpfully.

"Translation, Hodges," Catherine insisted.

"Venom."

" _Venom_?" echoed Morgan.

Hodges nodded sagely. "Scorpion venom.

"Specifically that of _Centruroides sculpturatus_ or the Arizona bark scorpion, the most toxic species in the United States. Though it's got nothing on the either the Arabian or the yellow fat-tailed scorpion -

"They're both deadly."

Perhaps he should have left that last part out, if his colleagues' stricken expressions were any indication.

"Except where do you get scorpion venom?" Morgan asked.

"It's more like how," Hodges replied. "Despite its name, the species is actually endemic to Las Vegas. You can catch them yourself.

"They're not that hard to find out in the desert, particularly at night as they glow under black light.

"All you need to milk them is an electrical kit, a pair of forceps, a tea strainer and a micropipette."

This time they all really were staring at him. Well, everyone apart from Henry who was far too used to Hodges' grandstanding to bat an eye.

"Internet," provided Hodges by way of an attempt at an explanation. "There's a guy over at the University of Arizona who has a whole how-to video on YouTube."

Which begged far too many questions that none of them had time for at the moment.

At this, Henry opted to step in. "But you'd probably need to milk more than a hundred individuals for a dose this large," he said.

"That's a lot of patience." Lindsey looked distressed at this.

"Or," Hodges added as he extracted a printout from one of his files with all the flair of a magician pulling a rabbit from out of hat, "you can order the stuff online from a chemical supply company for around five hundred bucks. Bargain actually.

"Turns out scorpion venom can be one of the most expensive liquids on earth. In Pakistan, the venom of certain species can go for upwards of $38 million a gallon."

"And I thought gas was expensive," Morgan muttered.

Catherine stepped in. "We'll get a warrant for Hannah's financials. See if she's made any interesting purchases lately." She turned to Henry. "What were you saying about the dosage?"

"About thirty milligrams. The equivalent of about a hundred stings."

 _Ouch_ , they all thought, but only Greg said.

"Lethal?" Catherine was almost afraid to ask.

Henry shook his head. "Not at that concentration. Closer to a 100 mg, maybe.

"At thirty, the neurotoxins wouldn't even knock you completely unconscious, just leave you pretty incoherent. Blurred vision. Slurred speech, that sort of thing.

"Although between the possible pain, vomiting or fever and potential tachycardia, seizures and acute respiratory distress, you might wish you were for the next 24 to 72 hours."

"Smart," Lindsey had to, however reluctantly, admit. "Knock someone out and they're dead weight, but incapacitate them just enough and they're still mobile and a lot more biddable.

"She really does her homework."

"Hannah always does her homework," rued Catherine.

"But why scorpion venom?" Morgan asked.

Greg shrugged. "Why not? Effective. Relatively easy to obtain and difficult to trace."

"It's probably simpler than that," Catherine said. "Think about it. What weapon would you use against a bug man? Bugs."

Lindsey nodded. "She knew."

"She seems to somehow know everything else. What about Hank?"

Henry glanced down at the printout in his hand. "The boxer's blood work tested positive for ACP or Acepromazine. Used in the 1950s as an antipsychotic for humans, today it's used almost exclusively as an animal sedative."

"She fed it to him?" Catherine asked. "Sara says Hank's a sucker for people food. That and he's never met a stranger."

"Possible. It does come in an oral preparation, but was more likely administered via injection. Ingestion would have taken too long to take effect."

"Probably used the same EpiPen delivery system," said Greg. "Though we only ever found the one pen in the park."

"Hank was lucky," added Henry. "Turns out ACP shouldn't be used with boxers, particularly boxers his age. It can over slow down the heart and cause a sudden, sometimes fatal drop in blood pressure."

"And there's no doubt Hannah knew that, too."

Equally there was absolutely no mistaking the bitterness in Catherine's tone.

"Maybe leave that part out when you tell Sara," insisted Lindsey.

Quietly, Henry offered, "She already knows."

No one had much to say after that.

"So," Catherine said once she'd been able to get her mind to return to the task at hand, "Hannah probably drugged Grissom, then Hank. Waited for both to take effect -"

"It probably wouldn't have taken long," speculated Henry.

"But even incapacitated, Grissom isn't exactly a small guy," remarked Greg. "And Hannah weighs what, 75 pounds wet?"

"If that," Morgan replied.

"Brains over brawn," Catherine spat. "Physics, just like before."

"Having a Good Samaritan turn up doesn't hurt," offered Ecklie as he entered. "Call came in on the hotline twenty minutes ago."

P.D.'s delay in relaying this bit of information, however irritating, was understandable. Hotlines were all about fishing. Sometimes you got lucky and caught a break sooner rather than later. Sometimes all you caught were crazies. Sometimes you caught nothing at all. Better to check and confirm anything and everything before getting people's hopes up.

"Caller says Hannah told him her grandfather had the bad habit of wandering off after going on a bender."

" _Grandfather_?" gulped Greg. "Definitely leave that part out when you tell Sara."

Ignoring this Ecklie continued, "Wit said Grissom - Hannah told him his name was Bill - was stumbling about, slurring his words. Even smelled like he'd had a few too many. Holidays brought out the worst in some people and all. Guy felt sorry for the kid. Said she barely looked old enough to drive."

"'Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it,'" Catherine quoted absently.

It was her turn to garner curious looks.

"I heard Grissom say something like that once," she supplied.

"Anyway," Ecklie interjected, "Hannah claimed granddad would be fine once she got him home to sleep it off.

"Our Good Samaritan helped lead him to her vehicle, even helped with the seat belt."

"What about Hank?" asked Lindsey. "He didn't notice the dog?"

"Apparently not."

Morgan let out a pursed lipped "Even caught in the act, Hannah manages to turn it into a positive."

"He give you anything else?" Catherine asked.

"Vehicle's a white cargo van -"

Which meant nothing and they all knew it.

Lindsey was the one who uttered what they all were thinking, "There have to be thousands of white cargo vans registered in Vegas -"

"He did have a partial Nevada plate. P.D. is trying to track it down now."

"Well," said Catherine, "that explains how she got him out of the park. But not where she took him."

Hodges who'd been uncharacteristically quiet asked, "But why go through all that trouble? We already know she knows how to get away with murder. Why not just kill him?"

The subsequent silence proved practically deafening.

Ultimately, it was Morgan who regained the ability of speech first. "Hodges!" she exclaimed, while the others continued to gape at his callous faux pas.

Hodges blanched as if the full extent of what he'd just said had only just dawned on him.

His mouth was moving with the start of an apology when Ecklie and Catherine's phones buzzed in quick succession.

"Actually," Ecklie ruefully admitted as he peered down at the incoming text, "that's a valid question. And we could stand here all day and speculate. Or, we could just ask her instead.

"Hannah's lawyer's finally arrived."

xxxxxxx

Outside interrogation room two, Sara Sidle waited not that entirely patiently. Her previous failure, coupled with all those photos on Hannah's cell weighing heavy on her heart, she was eager, more than eager, to get another chance to try to get something useful out of Hannah West.

Worrying her wedding ring, she silently asked, _Gil, where are you?_

That wasn't the first time that day she had sent that query into the universe hoping for a reply. Then, as now, all that returned was silence.

Sara's relief at seeing Ecklie and Catherine finally stride up the hall however proved short lived. While Ecklie attempted to look apologetic, Catherine did a better job, but then it was the sheriff who bore the brunt of having to break the bad news.

"We're taking this one," he said. "Lawyer's now claiming conflict of interest. Amongst other things."

Sara scoffed. "After she's on the record specifically asking for me?"

"She certainly doesn't want you now."

"Cat and mouse," Sara murmured nearly under her breath.

Catherine nodded. "And you're the mouse."

"Yeah, well I've never been all that fond of cats."

"Only it's the cat who usually wins."

"Tell that to _Tom and Jerry_ ," Sara countered.

Catherine's tone turned gentle, " _Sara_ -"

Sara brushed Catherine's concern aside. "Go on. We wouldn't want to keep her waiting.

"I'll just be -" said Sara, indicating the door to the observation room.

xxxxxxx

"So what did you do with the body?"

Sheriff Conrad Ecklie's voice boomed over the observation room's speakers as Sara took her place on the other side of the glass. Apparently, he wasn't in the mood to waste time with the usual niceties.

"What body?" came Hannah's innocent reply.

Catherine slapped a photograph onto the table. With a start, Sara registered it as a hard copy of the picture she had forwarded to Ecklie for the A.P.B..

"This jog your memory?" demanded Catherine. "You can't tell me you don't recognize him."

"I never said I didn't."

"Look, we already know you have a thing for bodies. Like to dress them up. Leave them out for people to find."

Hannah's lawyer, a tall, middle-aged blonde man decked out in an obviously expensive dark designer suit and crimson tie and exuding all the arrogance he believed his law degree entitled him to - Sara had instantly pegged him as pretty boy, frat jock, BMOC in a younger life who had unfortunately aged into Ivy League entitlement - questioned a little too calm and collectedly: "Are you actually charging my client with something?"

"Don't worry," Ecklie assured him. "We've already read her her rights."

"Hence the handcuffs?"

Not that Hannah seemed to mind. Quite the contrary. She bore the metal bracelets with a sick and twisted sort of pride.

"Grand theft for starters," Catherine began.

The lawyer laughed. "For a couple of cadavers? They're worth what? Four hundred dollars a piece on the open market? Maybe. Makes it a misdemeanor charge at worst."

"True," Catherine readily conceded. "But dumping a body is a class D felony."

"Then how about we throw in some illegal wiretapping. Stalking. Harassment. B. and E.. Kidnap. Murder. You want me to keep going?" Ecklie asked.

To both Ecklie and Catherine's surprise it was Hannah who replied.

"Who said anything about murder?"

"You mean he's alive?"

Despite her best attempts, Catherine was unable to conceal her relief.

"Last time I saw him."

"Which was where and when?" demanded Ecklie.

"You don't have to answer that," Hannah's lawyer cautioned.

"Actually," Ecklie maintained, "you do."

"Wow," the lawyer mirthlessly laughed again, "you guys don't quit do you? Bad cop, good cop. Bad cop, bad cop. Does that ever really get you anywhere?"

Neither replied.

"We're done," he continued firmly, "with all the harassment. Wasn't it bad enough you harassed her poor brother to death?"

Wow _,_ thought Sara, that was the most impressive display of spin of she'd ever heard. But then Hannah did blame Sara. Somehow over the years what really had happened to Marlon West had shifted in his sister's mind to something else entirely.

It wasn't Hannah's fault, Marlon's suicide. It was Sara's. And now it was Sara's turn to pay. Sara took away the only person Hannah had ever really loved; Hannah intended to do the same.

As for Mr. Ivy League Law Degree, Sara understood how Shakespeare could have once written: "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."

From the look of barely contained fury on Catherine's face, Sara was sure she felt the same.

"The way I see it," the lawyer was continuing to say, supercilious as ever, "you haven't presented a single shred of evidence linking my client to these charges.

"So I'm officially petitioning for her immediate release."

"How do you sleep at night?"

The man eyed Catherine intently before replying, "Better than you apparently."

Then rising to his feet, he said, "We're done here."

Conrad Ecklie banged his fist so hard on the table it startled them all into staring.

"We're not done until I say we're done," he hissed, wholly uninterested in playing nice anymore.

Hannah's lawyer simply smirked.

"Threats usually work for you, Sheriff?

"Keep in mind anyone here so much as harms one hair on my client's head and you might as well resolve yourself to a mistrial right then and there. So why don't you just spare us all the trouble?"

"You know what doesn't make sense?" Catherine asked, in a quiet voice at odds with her usual fiery temper. " _Why?_ I mean why now? It's not Marlon's birthday. You're a few weeks late for the anniversary of his death.

"And then why didn't you just kill him in the park when you had the chance?"

The lawyer rested a cautionary hand on Hannah's shoulder. "Don't answer that."

Disregarding this, Hannah leant forward.

"You really want to know?"

In the observation room, Sara held her breath.

"Either of you speak French?" Hannah asked.

Catherine shook her head while Ecklie replied, "I've never had much use for it."

"That's too bad," Hannah simpered, ultimately unconcerned. It didn't matter in the slightest that they didn't. Sara did. And Hannah knew she did.

As if she could see right through the mirrored glass, Hannah's eyes found Sara's.

"It's simple really: _La vengeance se mange très-bien froide."_

When her examiners continued to regard her blankly, Hannah added, attempting to be as helpful as ever, "Loosely translated: 'Revenge is a dish best served cold.'"

And Sara certainly felt it.

"Perhaps, you might prefer Robert Frost?" Hannah suggested, not removing her gaze from the glass.

"'Some say the world will end in fire; Some say in ice,'" Hannah began.

Sara recognized the poem, Grissom having once quoted it to her. Originally a riff on Dante's _Inferno_ and astronomer Harlow Shapley's apocalyptic imaginings, in her husband's rhythmic resonating tones, the lines sounded profoundly, almost hypnotically, beautiful.

In Hannah's compact unpretentiousness, they chilled her to the bone.

From what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To know that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

"I'd say you've got four, maybe five hours left. Tops." Hannah grinned.

"Not nearly enough time to work it out at the rate you're going."

 _To be Continued in_ Left Out in the Cold

xxxxxxx

A/N: Hodges' how to milk a scorpion video really does exist on YouTube. And yes, I watched the whole thing. Worst of all, I did find it oddly stimulating... Intellectually speaking of course...

And in an odd bit of happenstance, what did I happen to spy this week at the local Insectarium as part of their Holloween festivities? An Arizona bark scorpion under black light. They really do glow the most eerie shade of almost green. It was - at least to me - very, very cool.

Also, for more about the case which brought Grissom and Sara back to Vegas in the first place, see ( _Not) Your Usual Ups and Downs._


	11. Eleven: Left out in the Cold

**Eleven: Left out in the Cold**

 _Breathe._

 _Just breathe._

Easier said than done, Gil Grissom rued as he choked on the frigid air currently invading his lungs.

 _It's not hard._

 _Just in and out. Repeat as necessary._

 _Simple, really,_ Sara had once informed him.

It certainly didn't feel simple in the suffocating dark.

Or perhaps it was the smothering coarse sheet that made him feel that way: unable to breathe, as if buried alive, but without the dirt or the decreased air supply. That and with the bitter cold and chilling fear equally conspiring against him.

Panic would help nothing, that he knew.

 _Come on, just breathe_.

In desperation, his reeling mind latched onto a memory from only a few weeks before:

The early afternoon sun blazed bright as he ascended from the below deck dark. Holding up a hand to shade his eyes, he blinked back the momentary brilliance.

Then almost as if resolving out of a mirage, Sara was there - his Sara - even more aglow in all the sunshine.

A few loose curls having come free from her hurried ponytail danced in the breeze as she perched there barefoot, dressed in little more than a light jacket over what he knew would be a tank top and a pair of drawstring yoga pants hung extra low on her slender hips by her body bent into one of those complicated yoga poses he never could quite remember the name of.

Hank lay curled up not too far from her; his half-drowsy eyes fixed on Sara as if to ensure she wouldn't just vanish.

Or perhaps Grissom was just projecting his own feelings onto the boxer yet again. He felt that way, too, these days, like she might just vanish if he let her out of his sight for too long.

Once Sara had neatly righted herself into a far more comfortable looking seated position, she called, "I know you're there, Gilbert. You don't have to lurk."

"I... I didn't want to disturb you while you were -"

"Breathing?" she offered with a laugh as his voice trailed off.

" _Busy._ "

"Never too busy for you," Sara said turning, the grin she greeted him with as warm and welcoming as the sunshine streaming about them both.

Indicating her bare feet, he said, "Your feet have to be freezing."

She shrugged this away with an indifferent, "Mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter."

"That's not what you say when the cold feet are mine."

Sara elected to ignore this. She patted the space beside her. "Come. Sit. Give it a try."

"Mind over matter?"

"How about we start with something simple. Like breathing."

Grissom gave her a look as if to inquire why he would suddenly need to learn something he was fairly certain he already knew how to do.

"I do know how to breathe," he maintained. "You just put your lips together and blow."

"Cute, Gil," Sara sighed at his cheek. "But I'd stick to whistling instead of humor if I were you.

"Come on." She patted a space on the deck beside her. "It's time I taught you something for once."

Perhaps Grissom probably should have, but he didn't tell her this wasn't the first time she had taught him something. Sara did that nearly every day, in both big and little ways.

Instead, he said, "I thought you said breathing was simple: _Just in and out. Repeat as necessary_."

Recalling that she had indeed told him as much once she laughed, "So you do listen -"

"From time to time." Grissom grinned.

"Time for a more advanced lesson then. Abdominal breathing."

Sara ticked off its virtues on her fingers. "Good for reducing stress, quieting the mind, keeping your limbic system more under control.

"How else do you think I kept from decking Ecklie all those years you were away?"

Conrad Ecklie might not have always (or ever) been his favorite person on the planet, but "He couldn't have been that bad," protested Grissom.

"He wasn't," Sara reluctantly admitted. "Still, it did come in handy."

When Grissom continued to look a little askance, she quipped, "Don't knock it until you try it."

It was his turn to turn conciliatory. "I wouldn't dream of it, dear."

 _Besides, what harm could it do?_ He was willing to try most things once, particularly with Sara by his side.

So he sat; rearranged his limbs until he mimicked her position.

Sara gave him a long, lingering approving once over before saying, "This mean you're done protesting?"

"Just awaiting your instructions."

"First thing you need to know is you need to breathe from here," she said her hand flat against his belly. "Not from here," she finished, tapping his chest.

Taking up his hand, she rested his palm about his middle, "Here, feel the difference."

While Grissom did really attempt to give it a go, he rather thought that if Sara was serious about wanting him to breathe, then perhaps she shouldn't have her hands on him, as even her simplest of touches still served to take his breath away.

But then it always had.

Not entirely ignorant of Grissom's state of distraction, Sara directed: "Close your eyes."

Satisfied he'd done as instructed, she said, "Feel how your regular breathing is fairly short and shallow?"

That that, too, was her fault, he opted not to inform her.

"Now, inhale deep through your nose. Slow. Nice and slow.

"Hold it there. Hold. Hold.

"Now exhale - Let it all go."

She pressed against his hand. "Keep your hand there. Feel how your belly expands as you inhale then contracts as you exhale?" He nodded. "That's how you know you're doing it right.

"Now, again. In... Out..."

"Repeat as necessary -" he quipped.

It didn't matter that he couldn't see her reaction with his eyes closed, Sara still rolled her own eyes at Grissom's flippant comment anyway.

Yet he did as she told him once, twice, three and then four times before he asked, "How come I've never seen you do it this way?"

"You're new. Just shut up and breathe, Gil."

"Yes, dear."

xxxxxxx

Back in the bitter cold, Grissom did have to give his wife credit. His panic really did begin to give way as he gradually eased his breathing back into some semblance of normality.

 _In. Out. Repeat as necessary, indeed._

How strange, he momentarily mused, and yet perhaps not, that the one who took his breath away would give it back to him again.

Not calm, but calmer, his mind began to creep back into clarity. Albeit a throbbing headache and equally indignant stomach rendered focusing far more problematic than usual.

Slowly, he mentally ticked off what he knew: he was cold, cuffed and in some sort of freezer. That had been the extent of what he'd managed to work out before he'd slid back into unconsciousness.

That he wasn't locked alive in a morgue or mortuary drawer took no more than the lifting of his head and the stretching out of his fingers to determine. Neither brushed cold steel.

Wherever he was didn't smell of food, so not a commercial refrigerator. Felt too cold for that anyway.

No, the prevailing scent above the gagging odor of alcohol (isopropyl or ethanol he couldn't quite work out, both came off equally astringent) was one he knew all too well: decomposition retarded by chemical preservatives.

Probably formaldehyde judging from the cloying sweetness - in high concentrations. Ergo, the near blinding headache and nausea. The organic molecule CH2O did possess the annoying habit of triggering migraines. Hence why he usually kept his specimens safely sealed in glass.

Perhaps a mortuary freezer, though the redolence reeked far too much for ordinary embalming. One, two, not even half a dozen conventionally preserved specimens gave off that much stink even in a closed off room, so there had to be more.

Cadavers explained, too, the rough fabric against his flesh. The dead never cared about thread count. Nor did you ever have to worry about them being afraid of the dark.

Funny, when it came to working out as much as he could about where he was, the dead told him.

Like they always had.

Only where would you keep a concentration of corpses, probably all made mobile by gurney?

The only place he could arrive at was some sort of anatomy lab. But a full anatomy/physiology lab in a city that lacked a medical school?

Of course, he might not even be in Vegas at all.

After all, Grissom had no clue how long he'd been out. Could have been minutes or hours. Days he doubted, as he was cold, but not yet shivering too badly.

 _How had he gotten here anyway?_ he wondered

His usual faultless memory failed him.

His last hours returned only in brief, fleeting flashes.

Rising. Pouring coffee. Picking up the puzzle pages. Hank on his lead. An empty park. And then -

Nothing.

Frustrated, beyond frustrated, Grissom settled on taking his own oft repeated advice of the sort frequently dispensed to weary witnesses suffering from the usual mental blocks brought on by shock.

 _When you can't remember, the best place to begin is the beginning._

 _Think back, not to right before it happened, but to the start of the day._

 _You woke up and -_

Hank had been the only one in bed with him when he had woken at 7:32. He knew the moment down to the minute as he had rolled over and blinked the clock into focus in order to determine the time.

Finding the space his wife usually occupied beside him both empty and cold to the touch, he called out for her.

Only the small apartment remained quiet. No shower running. No puttering about in the kitchen. No rustling of paper. No scrawl of pen or click of keyboard keys. No sounds at all of his wife.

Which was when he noticed his phone alight with a text alert banner. Clicking it open, he read:

 **SARA**

 **Today** 7:17 AM

Got called in.

Haven't forgotten

I owe you breakfast.

48 Across yomammajoke

Love you.

 _Big surprise,_ Grissom rued. _Vegas was Vegas after all._

He rose, then after considering his reply for a moment, set about typing, whistling as he went for Hank to follow.

In the kitchen, he found coffee currently keeping warm in its heated carafe and the day's _Las Vegas Sun_ already folded open to the puzzle page. A pen and a spare pair of reading glasses sat nearby waiting and ready to go.

Despite being disappointed at finding his wife gone, he had to smile at this. Sara knew him all too well.

What she hadn't known was that he'd mostly given up his puzzle habit post divorce. Regular newspaper delivery proved difficult with a boat. While he told himself that the experience wasn't the same online, mostly it just hurt too much having to complete them on his own.

But while Sara might not be here this morning to trade clues and answers, she had given today's crossword a start.

Per her text, he located 48 across, penned in yomammajoke. Glancing back at the prompt, he was glad she had. There was no way he would have come up with that one.

The rest of the puzzle however could wait. A quick glance at the weather app on his phone indicated the morning was far, far too nice to waste indoors.

Him having finished up a quick cup of coffee while Hank scarfed down his usual big bowl of kibble, Grissom clicked leash to collar, then sketch book and puzzle pages in hand led the boxer out into the day.

Their brief walk soon found them comfortably ensconced on their usual park bench. Hank, having taken his place at his master's feet, was all too soon yet again fast asleep. Grissom sat back content to enjoy the peace and quiet and his crossword. Usually an easy enough thing to do. People, he found, tended to leave one another to their own devices.

Strange, Grissom mused, to live in a city of hundreds of thousands, more than half a million these days, and still find oneself utterly alone.

Upon reaching twenty-two across (clue: _Chinese cabbage_ ; answer: _bok choy_ ), he paused in his puzzle to consider what best to serve tomorrow night for dinner. Good thing they were going out that night with his mother, as he doubted Sara had bothered to pack a lunch. It was equally possible she would forget to eat anyway, busy as she often got on a call. As for tomorrow, it never hurt to be prepared.

It was then that he hit on the perfect solution.

Off in the paper's margin he scrawled: bread, butter, cheese, cream, tomato soup, oranges.

Recalling the very pleasant way the day before had begun, he underlined oranges twice.

Not only did he favor the fruit's sweet tart taste (particularly sucked from Sara's skin) but his wife really was, as Ticos were wont to say, and even more so these days, _the other half of his orange_.

Words might still fail him, too often, too, even now with her, but at least in this, he could hint at his heart.

Gladdened, he returned to his puzzle. He'd been back at it for a few minutes when his far more post-surgery sensitive ears picked up the light fall of feet on concrete. A common enough sound as it was in the park, he opted to ignore it. Hank's head however lifted.

But then Hank frequently got attention in the park, especially if there were any children about. The dog's patient and naturally sweet temperament well disposed him to strangers. Even at his ancient (for a dog) age, the boxer relished all the extra attention. So it wasn't all that uncommon for a stranger to come up for a pet.

Except Hank hadn't been the focus of attention. Grissom had the order muddled.

Unsurprising, as next everything suddenly seemed to happen all at once.

Hank hadn't barked. That he was clear on.

From out of the blue, there came a crash. Something - no someone - careened into him. With violent jolt, his head and neck jerked forward then back.

Stunned, and thus before he knew it, there was a bite and hiss his near his neck too long - too hard - too loud - to be that of an insect.

When he tried to bat whatever it was away, a pair of hands, which by their small size should have proven unable to keep him down, pressed him back into the bench as the world around him began to fade in and out like an old fashioned radio signal being tuned.

He tried, but failed to shake off the sudden mind-numbing dizziness.

Just before his vision completely blurred, he caught sight of a figure kneeling before him.

His brain had barely matched name to features before the fuzziness overtook him:

 _Hannah West._

Leaning in, the young woman simpered, "Goodnight, Dr. Grissom."


	12. Twelve: Dead Ends

**Twelve: Dead Ends**

"Jim!" Catherine exclaimed, unexpectedly encountering the erstwhile police captain and current head of Eclipse security Jim Brass.

"What are you -" she asked as they briefly hugged.

"Took a sick day," Brass replied. "Didn't exactly expect to run into the boss," he shrugged, not looking the least contrite. "Heard the news. Came to help work the hotlines."

Then by way of explanation, he added, "He'd do the same for me."

 _Family was family after all._

"Was on my way to give the sheriff the news in person. You'll do just as well. Better even."

Passing her a slip of paper, Brass gave her an ever-fond grin. "Tracked down your van's previous owner."

Catherine couldn't help but appear impressed.

"Don't give me that look," he chided. "I'm retired, not useless.

"Last R.O. was a Michael Larch. Formerly of North Las Vegas. Current proud resident of the Western Las Vegas Correctional Facility. Doing a second stint for grand larceny."

"Nice," sighed Catherine.

"Yeah," Brass agreed. "Went out there to have a little chat. You know through the glass.

"He told me he sold his van a couple of weeks before he was last picked up. Through Craigslist. Was trying to cover up the fact he managed to lose every penny of his last paycheck playing five card stud with his poker buddies."

" _Really nice_."

"The wife, excuse me, soon to be _ex-_ wife, wasn't exactly thrilled. Had some choice words when we talked.

"Anyway, cash sale," Brass said. "He handed the title over. Transfer was never filed."

 _Of course not_ , rued Catherine. Hannah wasn't dumb enough to leave a paper trail.

"He remember Hannah at all?"

Brass scoffed. "After a month? Not a chance. Besides, Larch claimed it was night and dark and of course, he was more than a little blotto when he met the buyer.

"So I'd say he'd probably have better luck picking out a can of Colt 45 than recognizing Hannah from a six pack.

"Most I could get out of him was the buyer was a girl and she was short."

Catherine shook her head. Another dead end.

"Any word on the location of the van?"

"Not that I've heard. Sorry I couldn't have been more help," Brass apologized.

Catherine waived his regret away. She wasn't so sure there really was any help or hope left to be had at the moment.

"What about the hotlines? Anything else?" she asked.

"Nothing but the usual whack jobs."

"So no further credible leads?"

"Not even incredible ones." Brass shook his head. "I'm going to go head back to the phones. Maybe we'll still get lucky."

"Yeah."

Although Catherine was starting to believe the odds were no longer in their favor - if they had ever been.

But that wasn't Brass's fault. Touched that he had come in to help, Catherine called "Oh and Jim -"

He turned.

She gave him an encouraging grin. "I wouldn't worry about the boss. Take whatever sick time you need."

xxxxxxx

Back in the lab, Sara leant over Archie Johnson's shoulder as they searched through traffic cam and other CCTV footage looking for some clue, any clue, as to where Hannah may have gone after leaving Sara's apartment.

After two hours the sum total of what they had managed to uncover was a big fat goose egg.

At least, Sara thought, Catherine couldn't accuse her of violating her _eyes, no hands_ edict.

Sara had had to do something, she just couldn't stand around waiting. Patience had never been one of her virtues. Not by a long shot. She sucked at waiting. Always had. Always would. Scanning the monitors with Archie was all that was keeping her from currently climbing the walls.

"The average person's caught on camera 75 times a day in Vegas and we can't manage to catch her once?

"So much for Big Brother," she lamented.

"You think it's bad here?" Archie asked. "In London there are four cameras for every thousand people. Means you're on candid camera at least 300 times a day."

"Would come in handy now."

"Unfortunately," Archie replied as he pulled up yet another feed, "if you stay off the main roads, don't run red lights, avoid casinos, gas stations and ATMs, it's still possible to remain invisible."

xxxxxxx

Henry and Hodges practically tackled Catherine as she made her way down the hall.

"We heard they found the van -" Henry nearly exploded out of eagerness.

"We'll go - help - whatever you need," Hodges pleaded.

"Yeah," Henry readily agreed in a rather rare show of solidarity.

Sara, who at all the commotion had momentarily left Archie's side, softly smiled, touched by this.

Particularly as it was well passed the end of shift, going on several shifts now, and yet no one had made a single motion to go, nor uttered a single word of complaint.

They'd all stayed.

But then this was Grissom. Sara recalled Catherine once telling her they'd all go to hell and back for him.

And they did.

Sara couldn't help but be grateful for this, too.

And for the fact that Catherine and not she was in the unenviable position of finding a way to let the guys down easy when all they most wanted to do was help. Sara certainly knew how the two felt.

"We need you guys here," Catherine said gently, "in case they find anything."

However disappointed not to be out there doing something, both techs nodded and wordlessly returned to their labs.

Watching them go with a sad twitch of the lips, Catherine pulled out her cell and dialed.

"Hey, Morgan," she said into the phone. "You and Lindsey make it out to McCarran yet?

"Long-term parking, right. Patrol will meet you there.

"I want you two to wrap it. We need that van to go and I don't want to risking losing anything on the way here."

xxxxxxx

"Best place to hide a car," Morgan claimed as she climbed out of the Denali. "Just drop it off and you're only a cab, bus or shuttle ride away from anywhere you might want to go."

Having tugged on her latex gloves, she tried the driver's side door. It opened.

"Unlocked," she said not entirely surprised. She clicked on her MagLite to get a better look inside.

"And the keys still left in the ignition. How helpful."

"Miracle it hadn't been stolen," said Lindsey.

"I've got the feeling Hannah wanted it found."

At that moment, her flashlight beam illuminated exactly why: the neat pile of clothes left on the passenger side seat.

 _This was so not good._

"You heard the boss," Morgan sighed. "Wrap it."

They did.

xxxxxxx

"Thanks, guys," Morgan called after Auto Detail once they had dropped off the nondescript white Econoline in the lab's automobile bay.

"Let's see what we've got," she said to Lindsey as she handed the rookie C.S.I. the scalpel so she might do the honors.

Carefully slitting through the several layers of industrial grade plastic wrap, the two made quick work of unwrapping the van.

"Okay -"

After a very long breath, Morgan began to address the assembled group of techs and C.S.I.s: "Lindsey, you're with me on the inside. I want you to take the passenger seat. Bag and tag the clothes. Fine tooth comb the upholstery. We'll bring in the microvac once that's done."

With a nod, Lindsey set about unpacking her own crime scene case.

"Hodges, you take the tires and undercarriage. Henry, help him with trace.

"Don't forget to check the grille. Maybe, just maybe, she picked up something, somewhere along the way."

Quickly tugging on pairs of the ever-horrid coveralls over their usual lab garb, Henry and Hodges briskly set to work sans any of their usual bickering or commentary.

Morgan turned to the fingerprint tech, "Mandy, why don't you dust the outside while we finish up inside?"

"Then bomb it?" Mandy asked, referring to the practice of setting off an airborne superglue mixture to help better develop difficult interior prints.

Morgan nodded her agreement as she snapped on her own gloves.

"I'll take the trip computer," Greg suggested, already retrieving the necessary electronics from their storage cabinet. "See if we can narrow down the search radius any."

Careful not to smudge any potential fingerprints, Morgan popped open the driver's side door. Instantly, her nose wrinkled.

"You smell that?" she asked as Lindsey poked her head in the passenger side.

"Yeah."

From where he had his head buried beneath the hood, Greg groaned, "Not you two, too."

Both women ignored this - and him.

"Clean," Lindsey observed.

"Too clean," Morgan agreed. " _Industrial_ clean. The full treatment. Practically has that new car smell."

"Detailer," Lindsey surmised.

"Waste of money on a P.O.S. like this one. Definitely not new car material. Odometer reads 250,000 miles. You don't deep clean a ten year old van unless -"

"You're Hannah -"

"And have something to hide."

"We could try to track down the detailer," Lindsey suggested hopefully.

"There have to be four dozen detailers in the city alone, not counting the surrounding towns," countered Morgan. "Likelihood any one of them is going to call the hotline, considering their habit of hiring illegals and ex-cons -"

"Less than zero," Lindsey concluded

"So," Morgan sighed, "without a receipt -"

"We've got nothing."

"Exactly."

With that disheartening thought, they set to work.

xxxxxxx

 _Always follow the evidence_.

Time and time again, that was what Dr. Gil Grissom had told Lindsey Willows during their not infrequent bouts of correspondence. Unfortunately, Lindsey had never thought to ask him the question which worried her now: What do you do when all the evidence leads you nowhere?

She was about to begin bagging the neat pile of clothes perched on the passenger seat when something unexpected caught her eye. She withdrew her hand lens for a better look.

"Bingo!" she cried, snagging a single hair from where it had been embedded in the headrest's coarse fabric.

Morgan peered hopefully over at her. "You got something?"

Lindsey extended the pale strand for her to examine. "And it's still got a skin tag."

"Good for DNA," Morgan readily agreed.

From where he huddled at the front of the van, Henry's ears perked up. "Did I hear DNA?" Before they could reply, he had scrambled to his feet. "You got something for me?" he asked peering over Lindsey's shoulder.

"Hand me a vial," Lindsey replied. After carefully slipping the hair inside and capping it closed she proudly handed it over to him.

"I'll go run it now," Henry began, then gave the grille he had been so minutely examining only the minute before a reluctant backwards glance. "Unless -"

From under the car, Hodges chimed, "Go on. I can finish up here."

Henry Andrews needed no further encouragement.

Morgan didn't mention to any of them that judging from its apparent lack of pigment, the hair would more than likely prove to be Grissom's, which only meant Hannah took him. As to where, there was as yet still no clue.

Mentally ticking off the list as she went, Lindsey bagged and tagged each item of clothing separately. Under the worn, almost ratty straw hat lay a pair of ordinary white sports socks neatly bundled. A white undershirt and a simple pair of boxers sat beneath this. Then came a bright blue polo shirt, folded retail sharp; a pair of dark colored khakis with the creases still crisp. The jacket tucked below proved a little heavier than what Vegas' temperate autumns typically required.

Pulling up a copy of Hannah's surveillance photos on her phone, the one shot earlier that morning, Lindsey compared her current inventory to everything Grissom had donned that day.

A perfect match, down to the nondescript walking shoes he'd been wearing, the ones she had discovered, laces tied and soles tucked into the foot well just waiting to be found.

Her gloved fingers plundered every pocket, uncovering keys, a wallet, a watch, and a well-worn penknife as well as a plain cotton handkerchief unused and still folded. Several doggie bags of the sort for cleaning up after your pet. A couple of coins.

Precious little, now that she thought about it, and yet likely everything he'd possessed when Hannah took him who knew where.

Nearly banging his head on the hood in his hurry, Greg moved to the map of Vegas tacked to one wall. Using the key at the bottom, he measured out the miles from his trip data on a string.

"You guys found the car in the long term lot at McCarran, right?" he asked, knotting one end with a pin the other with a red pencil.

"Yeah. At Terminal One," Morgan replied, joining him at the map.

"Trip computer indicates she traveled 7 miles. Which means," he said, drawing in the pre-measured arc from the airport, "her last stop was...

"Pretty much anywhere within the Las Vegas Metro area."

"And that's not taking into account that she likely made a stop at the detailers along the way," added Morgan.

Giving Greg a reassuring pat on the back, Morgan conceded, "Besides, I'd wager she knew all about the onboard trip computer."

Greg shrugged. That wouldn't surprise him in the slightest. He knew perfectly well that when it came to Hannah West they were at best grasping at straws; knew equally, too, there was nothing else to do.

Morgan retrieved the microvac on her way back to the van. Greg unplugged the trip computer and was about to replace it in its cupboard when he first noted Lindsey's discomfort.

Not that he had managed to miss the fact that the case had taken a bit of the usual bounce from the neophyte field mouse's step. Under the cover of the low rumble of Morgan's handvac, he leaned in to ask: "You okay?"

Lindsey nodded a bit too quickly. Still, Greg left her to it.

After a while she paused over her label writing to say, "It gets easier, right?"

"Yeah," Greg rushed to reassure her, all the while thinking _Sometimes too easy_.

"It's always harder when it's someone you know," he said.

"Yeah."

Only the week before, Lindsey had received a reply to an earlier query of hers regarding a question of evidence collection protocol she had been too shy to ask of the others, fearing they would think it - and therefore her - stupid. Mr. Grissom hadn't regarded it that way in the least, nor had he any of the other myriad of questions she'd written him with.

This last time he'd even included a potentially embarrassing anecdote from his rookie days back in Minnesota, a reminder, Lindsey figured, that everyone was new once.

And then there had been that box of chocolate covered grasshoppers. Lindsey didn't know what the big deal was. They crunched a bit like peanuts and Grissom had warned her about getting the legs stuck in her teeth.

Besides, they were chocolate after all.

But from the way her mother grimaced when Lindsey had offered her some, you'd have thought she'd offered her chocolate covered toenails.

Up until today Lindsey had had a hard time not feeling a bit pleased with herself at the way everything had turned out in the end: happily, very happily, if the wedding rings and Sara's perpetual glow were any indication.

At the moment, however, she mostly just felt sick to her stomach.

"You want me to take over for a while?" asked Greg.

"No," Lindsey insisted, shoving the last of her personal feelings aside.

She couldn't let Mr. Grissom down. Wouldn't let Mr. Grissom down. Not now when it mattered most. "I've got this. I've got this."

Greg had to respect her resolve.

From the passenger side of the van, Mandy let out a frustrated groan. Despite her diligent dusting, her fingerprint powder found little purchase, save for the handle on the passenger side where a series of prints bloomed black. Mandy deftly lifted each.

A run through her handheld print scanner came up UNKNOWN.

"Wanna bet they belong to our Good Samaritan?" she sighed.

Both Greg and Lindsey reluctantly agreed.

As for the lack of any other prints -

"It's the end of November. No one would think twice about seeing someone outside wearing gloves," offered Lindsey.

"You getting anything?" Greg called over to Morgan over the continued whine of the vacuum.

A near deafening silence settled over the bay once Morgan flipped the machine off. Clicking the trap open, she held the contents out for him to examine.

Nothing.

Greg had to fight down the urge to kick the van's tires in frustration.

"Those prints might belong to our Good Samaritan, but I'm betting this didn't," Lindsey cut in, withdrawing an EpiPen from beneath the passenger seat.

"What do you think?" she asked. "Got venom?"

xxxxxxx

"Actually," Henry reported as he consulted his results printout, "it's venom with a Diphenhydramine HCl chaser."

"The over-the-counter sleep aid?" asked Lindsey.

Henry nodded. "At about six times the recommended dosage. From the concentration and the particle size, she probably ground up about a dozen pills before dissolving them in solution.

"Not quite enough for an overdose, but enough to create a heck of a hangover later."

"K.I.S.S. -" Lindsey surmised.

Taken aback at her choice of word, Henry stammered, " _Kiss?_ "

"Not that kind of kiss," Lindsey laughed. "K.I.S.S.. _Keep it simple, Sherlock_. Well, technically _stupid_.

"I think it sounds better the other way."

At the way Henry was continuing to gape at her she added, "With her background in chemistry, Hannah could have probably synthesized anything. But it wasn't necessary. Over-the-counter does the trick just as well, can be purchased at any drug store and since it isn't a controlled substance, the purchase isn't monitored, so as long as you pay in cash, it can't be traced.

"K.I.S.S.."

xxxxxxx

Back in the print lab, Mandy reviewed with Catherine what very little evidence she had had to process that day.

"EpiPens were clean," she began. "So were both sets of keys, the van's and Grissom's. Not even a partial. Same goes for shoes, wallet, and watch. Everything.

"Maybe there's still a chance Henry can get touch DNA, but I'm not sure what that's going to tell us about where he's been taken."

Catherine wasn't so sure herself.

xxxxxxx

She wasn't any surer when she joined Morgan and Ecklie in a walking meeting down the lab hallway.

"Any chance she could have taken the clothes from the house?" Ecklie asked.

Morgan shook her head. "Prints say she wasn't in the bedroom. Only Grissom's and Sara's on any of the door handles. No smudges.

"Front door was wiped, of course.

"And I checked, you can't open any of the doors without using the handles.

"In any case, Lindsey says the clothes are an exact match for what he was wearing in Hannah's last surveillance photo.

"It's... It's like everything else: we're finding him one piece at a time."

"As long as we don't start finding him in pieces," maintained Catherine grimly.

"As for the van," Morgan continued. "No fibers. No interior prints. No blood or other biologicals. The thing's obviously been detailed. No trace except this -"

Morgan pulled up the picture on her phone.

"A single hair?" Ecklie sounded incredulous. "A detailer wouldn't miss that."

"And how many hairs with skin tags still attached have you ever found on top of a head rest?" asked Morgan.

Catherine scoffed. "Planted."

Morgan nodded. "Henry's already running DNA. But even with the new ION system, the full profile won't be ready for a couple more hours.

"But my guess: definitely Grissom's."

"Anything else from the car?" inquired Ecklie.

"Trip computer indicates her last trip was seven miles. Not that that matters. Hannah didn't go straight to the airport from wherever she left Grissom."

"She knows better," Catherine agreed.

"Which," Ecklie summarized, "means we've still got nothing."

"That's exactly what it means." Catherine's typically composed voice was starting to rage in frustration. "Their place is a dead end. Hannah's apartment - the park - the van - all dead ends.

"We've got nothing but what she's given us and she's given us zilch. Less than zilch. She's been five steps ahead of us before we even got started."

"Then we go back over everything," Ecklie offered in a tone he hoped might soothe Catherine.

It didn't. Or Morgan for that matter.

"We have," his daughter protested.

"Find _something_ ," he insisted.

"Dad, what if there's nothing to find?" Morgan asked, her own voice brittle. "I mean Sara's right. Hannah's had years to plan this. There's no way she's going to slip up. Everything we've found, she wanted us to find."

The three of them stopped short in front of the layout room. Inside, Sara Sidle lingered over the day's paltry evidence collection.

Ecklie lowered his voice, though he was no less firm. "You want to go in there and tell her that?" he asked. "Because I can't."

The other two couldn't either.

At the sight of Sara pouring over her husband's things, Catherine seemed to rally. She turned to Morgan.

"Go back to the park," she said. "I'll try Hannah's. Lindsey can take another crack at Sara's place, while Greg goes over the car again. Hodges can help.

"Maybe fresh eyes -"

Morgan hurried off to brief the others.

For a long moment, Ecklie and Catherine continued to watch Sara through the glass until Catherine hollowly intoned:

"What are we going to tell her?"


	13. Thirteen: Freezer Burn

**Thirteen: Freezer Burn**

 _Okay._

 _Okay._

Trying to gather up his oddly meandering thoughts, Gil Grissom attempted a mental inventory. He knew how he got here. Vaguely, knew where he was. It was how to get out he proved in no way the least sure of.

While he knew all walk-in morgue refrigeration units were equipped to be opened from the inside, that knowledge did him no real good now. Not with the bonds at his wrists and ankles holding fast. That and with its casters locked into place, he couldn't even rock the gurney let alone topple it.

He would simply have to think his way out.

Which proved far far easier said than done.

Particularly as his normally agile brain was at the moment as strangely addled by the cold and whatever Hannah West had slipped him as the rest of him.

Each thought took longer. His mind drifted; his thoughts wandered.

Eyes heavy, head heavy, limbs heavy, he was tired, so tired.

Not that sleep would come. While he might fade in and out of consciousness as if he really was some ill tuned old school radio, the sleep where dreams may come utterly eluded him.

The headache didn't help.

Migraines were migraines and a bitch to have to bear, but whatever this was, was something else entirely.

He didn't just have a funeral in his brain with all the mourners treading to and fro; that drum, drum, drum, drumming until he begged his mind would go numb. Instead, it all felt far more like an enforced attendance at a heavy metal concert and he was stuck beside the speaker. Every time he tried to will the throbbing ache away, it only pulsed harder, raged louder.

At least he was down to vomiting bile. Though Grissom wasn't entirely sure if the ever-present bitterness proved better or worse.

It just was.

He tried to focus on the very basics: who - what - where - when - why - how.

Who - what - where, he already had to some degree. Why, he had a pretty good idea. How probably didn't matter, not to him here and now. When - who knew?

Not only did he not have the least clue how long he'd been out before he'd originally come to, he had no way in the frigid dark to determine time at all. Unlike his beloved bees who even when confined to their darkened hives kept regular hours as well as the time.

But then bugs were clever that way.

Crickets, after all, could be used to tell the temperature. Their steady stridulations made for handy natural thermometers. Able to chirp more than 2,600 times without pause or beat, they were as reliable and regular as any metronome. While the precise calculations might vary slightly from species to species, the equations proved simple enough.

To determine the ambient temperature via tree cricket you added 50 to the product of the number of chirps in a minute minus 92 divided by 4.7. When using the conventional house cricket you added 50 to the product of that same number of chirps per minute but this time subtracting 40 from the total before dividing it by 4.

Of course any current computations would prove useless. Crickets didn't chirp, couldn't chirp, when kept at the standard just above freezing morgue cooler operating temperature of 9 degrees Celsius or 39 degrees Fahrenheit.

Crickets weren't the only ones who faced a certain chilly demise, however. While not exactly freezing, frigid cadaver storage rooms were still cold enough to kill a person. Heck, technically hypothermia was possible at temperatures as high as eighty.

Right now, Grissom would kill for eighty.

He certainly hadn't needed the crickets to tell him it was cold. He could feel that all the way down to his bones.

Contrary to what people frequently believed about deserts always being hot, it got chilly in Vegas, where in the cooler months the nighttime temperatures frequently dipped into the forties.

Even coastal California in November hovered in the fifties for a low. Which had made for particularly interesting mornings when Sara not infrequently insisted on wearing his shirt and only his shirt to take in the sunrise.

Grissom never could fathom how she couldn't be cold. However whenever he hazarded to comment as much to her, Sara only gave him what had soon become her customary twinkle-eyed flirtatious reply:

 _Someone will just have to warm me up_.

Of course Grissom had been only all too happy to comply.

God, he could really use her warmth right now. Use her.

Particularly as each hoary breath sucked precious heat from his core; left his lungs to burn cold. His eyes began to itch with it. His lips dried, cracked.

The omnipresent cutting cold licked at his extremities, seared into his skin. As disconcerting as the whole near smothering white sheet shroud might be, and what little actual protection it might serve as a barrier against the cold, admittedly it did act to keep what little remained of his body heat close.

Regrettably, he couldn't say the same about the gurney's near ice-cold metal beneath him, leeching heat from every inch of bare skin in contact with it as it did. Something Grissom couldn't in the least prevent. Wrists and ankles handcuffed bound, butterflied as he was, he couldn't even curl up on himself, could barely move at all, leaving him unable to horde even a handful of heat. He couldn't even attempt to rub warmth back into his own hands.

Slowly, painfully slowly, what little remained had fled from his finger and toes. First the tips, then further, no matter how he tried to flex either back into feeling.

They, too, were the first to ache, and worst, until they no longer felt anything at all.

With a pang, he recalled the way Warrick's life simply bled out of him. His own warmth - life - was, he knew, similarly slipping away.

Part of him knew this was normal. The rational, reasonable, scientific part of him.

Just the body's way of coping with the cold. Blood flow naturally, normally, became further and further constricted, restricted to the center core the further and further the body's temperature fell. Those fingers and toes ultimately weren't near as life essential compared to the heart or lungs being able to keep the brain functioning.

And admittedly he had been colder. A lot colder.

After all, with temperatures that regularly dipped below minus three degrees even without the wind-chill, cold had proved a veritable way of life in Hennepin County during those early years of his investigative career. Dangerous, too, for any of those unlucky enough to go missing in the snow or ended up trapped beneath the ice. Exposure was deadly. Grissom had seen his share of dead who'd died that way.

He didn't really relish becoming one of them.

So no, this wasn't the coldest he'd ever been. But damp and naked, it felt colder.

Too bad he wasn't a bear, he rued.

During periods of hibernation, ursine body temperatures regularly dropped from 91 to 80 degrees. Their heart rate fell from a high of 55 beats to nine and their overall metabolism slowed by almost 75%. Heck, their bodies were even built to recycle urine and reuse proteins in such a way which helped to stave off muscle atrophy. Sadly, both of those abilities could have really could have come in handy.

Even scorpions could survive being frozen alive for weeks, underwater for two days and without food for twelve months.

But neither had anything on _Gynaephora groenlandica,_ or the arctic wooly bear caterpillar, which frequently had to endure being frozen solid at temperatures as

low as 58 degrees below zero for ten months at a time. Of course all that cold meant it took them seven years of freeze and thaw to eventually pupate and then after all that only to eventually emerge as nothing more spectacular than a short-lived, rather drab, nondescript imago. But then appearances weren't everything.

That this thought had sprung to mind really came as no surprise. The longer Grissom found himself confined to the cold, ever-present dark, the more he found his mind clinging to whatever facts and information his mind could manage at the moment to grab onto. However futile perhaps, Grissom held fast to his knowledge, as if that knowing might keep the coming from coming and overcoming him.

Usually, the science proved soothing. Right now not so much.

Particularly once the shivering began in earnest.

It was normal. He reminded himself.

So he was neither surprised nor scared when the slight uncontrollable quiver and shake suddenly started. It was natural. Beneficial even.

Just the heat center of his hypothalamus kicking in. Besides, nothing proved better for increasing heat production than shivering.

Shivering was part of surviving. Meant the body was still trying, still fighting the cold. Somehow though the thought didn't make him feel any warmer.

Still, it was necessary.

Honeybees regularly shivered their way back to being able to fly. Ectotherms as they and other insects were, their resting body temperatures matched the ambient temperature. So if it was a cool 62 on a spring day, a not yet busy bee outside the near constant 90-95 degrees of the hive was only 62 degrees warm. Which could prove problematic as a bee's flight muscles had to be warmed to a balmy 80 degrees before she could even think about taking to wing. That and the smaller the animal the harder it was to keep warm in the first place. It wasn't always easy being a bee.

The more outdoor temps dropped the longer the wing flapping preflight buzzing took, even at their eye blurring beat rates of 200 per second (the human mechanical equivalent of approximately 12,000 rpm, about the rate of a high revving motor bike). An impressive feat really for something that topped out at the size of your usual office paper clip. Particularly when compared to the best the bird world had to offer. Hummingbirds, those most master of avian wing flappers, usually only topped out somewhere around 50 wingbeats per second. Mind you bees did have a metabolic rate twice as high. But still. Bugs frequently had done it first - and still best.

What this meant, however, was that bees could go from chilled to flight ready in

little more than a few seconds, other times the necessary 25 degree increase in body temperature could take as long as 15 minutes. Grissom knew he'd be lucky if his own shivering generated a degree or two of warmth over the next several hours.

Curiously enough, the frequency of the attendant hum of the process increased

as the temperature increased, thus it was possible, at least with several species of

stingless bees, to determine a bee's body temperature purely by its buzz.

Although like the crickets, none of his beloved bees would be able to survive the morgue cooler's near freezing temps. Below 59 degrees, bees entered an insurmountable chill torpor. At those temperatures, they couldn't even begin to shiver themselves warm again.

Grissom was fairly certain he wouldn't be able to either.

 _It could be worse,_ he silently rued. Would be worse, when the shivering stopped.

As for now, his mind replayed the quote from _King Lear_ he'd had spoken to Sara only a few days before:

And worst I may be yet; the worst is not

So long as we can say 'This is the worst.'

Despite his own torpor, the quotations, like his motley collection of inane facts,

still came. Part of him wasn't entirely surprised to discover this. Inexperienced as

he'd frequently proved with too many aspects of the world, other people's words

had helped inform him, not all that dissimilar from the way science had helped

him make his way through dealing with the dead.

Both presently provided equally scant comfort.

Having been a crime scene investigator for most of his professional life had

necessarily left Gil Grissom already well acquainted with death. Or at least better

acquainted than most. He'd seen men and women die in myriad ways; children,

too. Frequently, each more horror inducing than the last.

As for his own eventual demise, his current predicament wasn't how he'd

imagined going.

Nor was to be able to pretty much calculate the hour of his death. Or at least come close.

Albeit that calculation proved far harder to figure with his cold addled brain.

He knew that via the process of algor mortis dead bodies cooled a regular 1.5 degrees an hour until they reached ambient temperature unless ventilation, humidity, insulation or surface temperature came into play. True, it wasn't quite the same with living bodies. But it wouldn't take long.

So while not many people possessed the privilege, dubious as it might be, to know the when and where and how of their death, Grissom had a pretty good

idea of how his own would happen.

Hypothermia, like the stages that happened after death, tended to follow a set

process all its own. In this, he did know exactly what to expect. Gerard and all

those bitter Minnesota winters had schooled him well.

 _A little learning_ \- no _,_ he corrected himself - _a little_ knowledge _was a dangerous thing,_ justas Alexander Pope had always rightly maintained.

Yes, this would be it, he knew, beyond the shadow of any doubt.

Not even the rational, reasonable part of him could keep the final stanza of T. S. Elliot's "The Hollow Men" from echoing in his ears:

 _This is the way the world ends._

Once the body - his body - dropped to 94 degrees, shivering started in earnest, well-accompanied as it was with confusion, memory loss, exhaustion, drowsiness, numb hands and feet, slurred speech, shallow breathing and the periodic loss of consciousness. Not yet moderate hypothermia, but hard enough.

His own perpetual fading in and out of both consciousness and reason told Grissom he was likely very nearly there already.

As for what was to come next, moderate hypothermia kicked in once the body cooled from 93 to 90 degrees. The shivering would intensify. Movements grow slow and labored. Ever more confusion would come. Yet he would - could - still present as somewhat alert. His thinking would further treacle. Speaking grow near impossible. Amnesia settle in.

Between the drop from 90 to 86 degrees, the shivering would stop; confusion reign. Any and all exposed skin would turn blue and puffy from the cold as moderate hypothermia morphed into severe.

Muscle rigidity and a semiconscious stupor would succeed once his temp fell to 82. His pulse and heart rate would slow. Bradycardia set in.

Below 82 degrees, he would be too far-gone to notice, let alone care. Perhaps he would end up blissfully unconscious. They said it was just like falling asleep, death via hypothermia, after all. Though the science said his heart and respiration rates would turn erratic; his pulse become no longer palpable.

If his body managed to make it to cool to 78 degrees, and that was a big if, as death could occur long before this temperature was reached, pulmonary edema was to be expected. Cardiac and respiratory failure would follow. Certain death beyond that.

Yes, Elliot was right:

 _This is the way the world ends_

 _This is the way the world ends_

 _This is the way the world ends_

 _Not with a bang but a whimper._

xxxxxxx

The next time Grissom came to it was to the violent rattle and clank of his cuffs against steel as he shook and shook and shook.

Though it was of a different sort of sound his mind grasped hold of: the regular ratta-ta-tat ricochet of rain against a rusty roof. The noise of a night nearly a lifetime ago. Or so many times it had felt. Time being fairly relative as it was.

Yes, the rain and the rumble and groan of thunder; the flash and crash of lightening, all of which had further punctuated the severe staccato, that rattle of rain. All that sound and fury signifying a rare for the as yet dry season Tican storm.

How he'd managed to sleep through any of it that night, Grissom still had no clue. Yet somehow he had. And long enough for the space in the bed beside him to have grown cool.

Soundless, at least in relation to the din all about him, he had slipped from the sheets; padded off to find his recently wedded wife not curled up somewhere warm and dry and inside, but standing stiff out on the tiny cottage's covered porch staring blindly out into the raging night.

There had been no need for him to ask why Sara was up or what had served to wake her. Grissom was immediately certain of both already. It was the rain. And the not yet distant memory of her being out there in the desert stuck under that car.

Even if the rain didn't normally worry her, he would have known the source of Sara's disquiet from the way her fingers unconsciously massaged their way along the places where her left arm had been broken.

No, the question hadn't been why Sara wasn't sleeping. It was how she had managed to sleep at all.

So lost she'd proven at whatever musings the weather had managed to conjure up, she started slightly at the soft rest of Grissom's palm along the small of her back. Though soon she'd let out a long sigh and he'd been instantly relieved to feel her relax into the touch.

After a while, her fingers left their kneading to search for his in the dark; threaded their way between his own. She held his hand hard. He held hers fast in return.

When her head dipped to rest on his shoulder, still saying nothing, he placed a lingering kiss into her sweat-dampened hair. And they just stood there together watching the rain in a companionable silence.

Until Sara finally let out a too long held breath.

Though her voice proved oddly steady as she said: "You know - when I was out there - out in the desert - It wasn't dying I was most afraid of. Not really.

"It was that I'd never see you again.

"And I - I didn't want to die like that: never seeing you again."

As Grissom lay there butterflied and chained in the morgue cooler's omnipresent dark, the shivering now beyond his control, what was left of his reason realized this was his fear now, too.

xxxxxxx

Tears itched at the corners of his eyes. Eventually, the grief leaked free to burn his cheeks, then chill his raw flesh ever further. He couldn't even wipe them away.

He could barely curl his fingers into a fist.

Numb as they were, they felt foreign, his hands. That his left now lacked that narrow band of gold even more so.

Not long after he'd come to the first time, he'd registered his wedding ring as

missing. Presently, he felt the loss of its comfort even more acutely, despite it having been but a week since Sara had slid it back onto his finger where it belonged.

Knowing right well he hadn't just lost it, Grissom knew, too, Hannah had deliberately taken it. For what purpose he didn't even want to begin to imagine. Part of him hoped the little psychopath was more into collecting trophies than wielding her ill-gotten acquisitions as weapons. Though this he doubted. Hannah had a long history of playing dirty.

No one he'd ever met better typified Lady Macbeth's instructions to _look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it_.

Though Grissom possessed little interest in thinking all that much about Hannah West. Too much time and life had already been wasted on that girl.

No, it was the absence of his ring that struck him now. Its being gone felt far too much like the last few days and weeks and months had never happened. As if none of it had ever happened at all.

And it was the thought of this loss more than anything which spurred him into what little action he could manage to muster.

For it was in that instant Grissom decided he wasn't about to let Hannah West take even the hope of the future from him without a fight. True, she'd already absconded with his ring, but there was no way in hell he going to let that girl succeed in taking Sara away from him. Not a second time.

He may not have fought for his wife before, but he would certainly fight for her now.

He would not just sit and wait and do nothing. He would not go gentle into that good night. Not as long as he had breath or strength left. He would fight. He would rage, rage against the dying of the light.

He would fight the cold. Fight the fatigue. Fight.

He wracked his brain for something - _anything_ \- he could do.

Only the only time he'd ever felt more powerless in his life had been when Sara had been out there in the desert and there hadn't seemed to be a damned thing he could do to find her.

Still, he tried anything and everything he could think of.

He hollered himself hoarse until his throat burned.

He tried again to sit. Managed little more than the six inches the cuffs allowed. Nor did the gurney budge an inch, locked in place and built not to tip as it was. Plus, fatigued as Grissom was, there was no way for him to have managed the momentum in any case.

Still, he tried again and again.

When this, too, proved fruitless and despite the fact that he rationally knew right well that handcuffs were designed not to break, Grissom struggled and yanked with all the force his wearied limbs would let him, until the deepening gouges about his wrists and ankles bled and filled the over preserved cooler air with that familiar bright bitter tang of copper.

Only vaguely did he register the pain, or the slight, sticky warmth pooling in his palms before the blood drops puddled onto the floor.

He beat his heels against the steel beneath him until they bruised.

All to no avail.

He knew it was futile.

Yet he had to do something. Try something.

He would not go gentle.

 _Do not go gentle,_ every bit of his mind and heart and soul raged.

 _Do not go gentle -_

 _Do not go -_

 _Do not -_


	14. Fourteen: The Blue Bottle in the Bell Ja

**Fourteen: The Blue Bottle in the Bell Jar**

Trying and yet failing miserably to keep her present fear at bay, Sara poured over the day's scant evidence collection. Neatly laid out as it was atop the vast light table, the effort appeared even more pitifully meager, particularly considering all the hours and energy that had been invested. Even more particularly as none of it revealed in the least what they were all so desperate to know: where Gil Grissom was.

To his wife, however, each and every item spoke volumes.

Despite all her years as a criminalist handling similarly bagged and tagged and red evidence tape sealed materials, Sara found it strange to find his things neatly encased in thin translucent plastic.

Like the donning of latex gloves in her own apartment, it just felt wrong, wrong to have all these pieces of him, of her husband, bundled, arranged and catalogued like the evidence she knew all too well they were.

Through the bag, Sara fingered the frames of his reading glasses, recalling how often she had retrieved them and pairs like them from the end of Grissom's nose when he fell asleep reading on the couch. How of all his things, they were the only objects he ever seemed to habitually forget or misplace. That and how much she rather enjoyed teasing him about how his having to wear them was an indicator of just how old he was getting.

The last time she had mentioned as much he had merely quipped, "Even butterflies wear bifocals."

Which Sara knew was true. And Grissom knew she knew, not above using her fondness for flutterbies to his own advantage. Although lepidopteran imagoes really did possess built-in separate distance and near vision systems, admittedly slightly imperfect ones, as butterflies did tend towards the myopic in any case which wasn't a big deal really when it was color and not eagle-eye precision that mattered most in their finding their way in the world.

As for his own need for vision correction, Grissom did occasionally take a moment to remind her that it wouldn't be too much longer before Sara would need them herself. An intimation she knew held the promise of _Go ahead and tease me today, just remember later turn about is fair play_.

However fool-hearty, that knowing did little to put a stop to Sara's ribbing, about his spectacles or that odd misshapen weather-beaten old Panama hat of his they'd recovered from the park bench - Grissom's hat.

Yes, she would know it anywhere. And as there was no hope of ever separating said man from said hat, Sara opted to accept it as just one of those things, like her husband's penchant for quotations, habit of keeping specimens in jars and appetite for chocolate covered insects, something quintessentially Gil Grissom. She couldn't help it. Grissom was ever Grissom and she would (at least most of the time) have him no other way.

Perhaps Robert Frost had a point when he had claimed, "We love the things we love for what they are."

Sara certainly preferred this quote of the famous poet's to Hannah's hauntingly intoned "Fire and Ice."

Besides, there were just far too many memories intertwined with that hat. That time out at the Sugar Cane Ranch where out of the blue, he had told her she made him happy. That day he equally unexpectedly turned up in the Costa Rican rainforest. Or when they had ended up having to tromp through a knee-deep river in pursuit of said hat when their mostly innocent bit of fly-fishing had gone awry. There had been, too, that time she had spotted him, or rather that hat, in the Gare de Nice-Ville, both looking out of place amongst all the French immaculate composure and yet so very much like home all the same. And none of that took into account any of their various canoeing misadventures. Or just everyday normal life.

At least she had had the chance to convey as much to him not all that long ago while the two of them had been lingering beneath the starry sky of Sainte Chappelle's lower chapel during the intermission for a rather curious concert being held in the great cathedral above.

For while music concerts were nothing new to the space, Sara was fairly certain they did not usually include a live orchestra playing alongside recorded whale song. While a far different sort of sacred sublime, the mashup proved inexpressibly beautiful, as if one could imagine a humpback above them in the soaring space, as if ocean had suddenly met air.

It was there as they sipped at aperitifs that Sara recalled the small hastily wrapped package she'd placed in her purse only a few hours before.

With an almost shy murmur of "It made me think of you," she pressed it into his palm.

"Well," Grissom began as he examined the silver medallion in his hand, "I guess I should be happy it wasn't Saint Jude this time."

Sara simply shook her head at this. Slipping her arm through his, she leaned her head against his shoulder to say, "You've never been a lost cause, Gil. Quite the contrary."

"Just lost," he agreed. "Hence the Saint Anthony medal. Patron Saint of Lost Things," he supplied.

"And found ones," Sara insisted.

"And found ones," he echoed with a smile of his own.

Back in the lab's layout room as she glimpsed the same medallion affixed to his keys, Sara sent out all her hope into the universe that her husband might be found again.

Returning to the objects at hand, Sara found his wallet lying atop its plastic sleeve, as if awaiting further processing. Tugging a latex glove from the box in the center of the table, Sara used it to flip the leather open, a little curious as to the contents.

It wasn't like she regularly rifled through his wallet. There had never been a need. So she was more than a little surprised and taken aback to discover what she did inside. There were the usual credit, debit, club and loyalty cards of course, his various on land and on the water licenses, a couple of business cards and two pockets of photographs.

Of course Sara already knew of Grissom's old school habit of keeping actual photographic prints even in this digital age, but then Gil Grissom had always ended towards old school and Sara equally always had rather liked and respected that about him.

But from their well-worn edges and the equally well-worn groove in the pocket, it was obvious these weren't a recent addition. That and the fact that upon closer inspection nearly all of them predated the divorce.

There was one of the two of them beaming at each other before the Trevi Fountain in Rome; a snapshot from Costa Rica, them all decked out in their field gear inscribed _Us 2008_ on the back. Beneath this, she found a photo of just herself at the beach, watching the waves curl about her feet, the same picture Sara was certain she had once insisted Grissom delete as she had been wearing little more than a semi-modest swimsuit at the time. So much for her husband having done as she had asked.

There was, too, a more recent photo of her aboard his boat, sitting on deck, pants rolled up and bare legs draped over the side, her sun hennaed hair all wild in the wind, and Sara captured in mid laugh as Hank attempted to slather her with sloppy kisses. However familiar the time and place of it, Sara couldn't quite remember the photo ever having being taken.

In a separate sleeve, she unearthed a copy of one of their new wedding pictures the Captain had forwarded on. While Sara had no clue when Grissom had found the time or the place to print one, she was pleased that he had, touched, too, to find beneath the photograph the neatly folded sheet of San Francisco Hilton stationary on which he'd carefully written out his Iris Murdock quote as well as his own wedding vows.

Sara half wondered if he chose to carry them so that he might better never forget his promises from that day. She certainly would never forget her own, even if _until death do us part_ didn't at this moment, seem all that far away.

But it was the clothes, his clothes, which ultimately cut her to the quick. She'd heard they'd found them, where they'd found them, left behind in the abandoned cargo van.

They were definitely his. She didn't need to bring up Hannah's latest photo of the day to be certain of that. Sara, herself, had bought him the shirt, thinking the color brought out the blue of his eyes. And Grissom just wouldn't be Grissom without his ever-ubiquitous jacket.

Even though she knew she shouldn't, she snapped the tape from the top of a bindle, the better to bury her nose in the white softness of his undershirt, to breathe in deep that warm, clean scent of him.

Although all too soon the momentary comfort gave way to chest tightening, gut wrenching grief. She had to clench her eye shut tight to keep back the swell of tears.

The greater you had to lose, the greater the grief, Sara knew, knew, too, she had everything to lose: her husband, partner, lover, best friend.

She'd lost him before and that had hurt like hell. If she lost him now, there would be no finding their way back to each other again. Sara didn't want to have to live with that fact. She didn't want to have to live without him. Not ever again.

Sara thought back again to that day out at the Sugar Cane Ranch and Grissom in that hat of his telling her she made him happy. She should have said the same to him so many times over the past few months. For he had and he did. He made her happy and a million other feelings she didn't quite have the words for. She begged and hoped and prayed she'd still get the chance.

Yet every minute, every hour that passed with nothing and nowhere to look next, the chance of success in finding and bringing him home safe and sound shrunk smaller and smaller and smaller.

It was growing harder and harder to stay hopeful.

Thus preoccupied, Sara didn't register Catherine Willows' presence in the doorway until the woman let out a quiet, "You're still here."

Caught red-handed, Sara startled. Catherine only gave her a sad, understanding half smile.

"Yeah, I wouldn't want to go home either."

Reluctantly resealing the plastic bag, Sara returned it to the table with the others before turning to the lab's current director.

"I see you drew the short straw. Any news?"

Catherine shook her head. "Whoever said _No news is good news_ was full of it."

"Dunno," Sara replied. "Gil could probably tell you."

"You... uh, hanging in there?"

It was Sara's turn to shrug. "I've never been good at doing nothing."

"You know what he'd say if he was here."

"'Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to do nothing,'" Sara sighed. "Yeah. He's right." Then with a wry half smile she added, "Sometimes a little too much."

Patience had certainly never been one of Sara Sidle's virtues. Something they all knew all too well. While she never had morphed into the loose cannon Ecklie had once warned Grissom she would become, Sara equally had never managed to master her husband's practically preternatural ability to sit and wait quietly.

Catherine's hint of grin at Sara's comment faded fast as she took in the meager contents of the table. It may have been more than a decade now, but Catherine could still recall the sight of Eddie dead on the slab. Eddie who had probably deserved everything he got and then some. Eddie Willows who had been her ex-husband after all. Still, there had been tears and ache even for the man who had only ever succeeded in breaking her heart and who had done nothing good with his life apart from giving her Lindsey.

For Sara to lose Grissom and like this -

No, none of them were going to let that happen. No way were they going to let that happen.

True, Catherine and Sara hadn't always seen eye to eye. Heck, she and Grissom hadn't exactly either, but they'd been friends as well as colleagues. Family even. However chronically dysfunctional. How could they not be after all the years and everything they'd been through?

And family took care of family.

They'd get him back. Somehow, someway, they would. Until then -

"I... I have something I thought you might -" Catherine began, reaching into her jacket pocket. "It's... It's what I want... if... if it were me."

Grissom's wedding ring glistened in her open palm.

"Lab guys are all finished with it," she continued, extending the band. "No point in keeping it in evidence as -"

"As Hannah can always claim she 'accidentally' found it," finished Sara.

"I thought you might like to hold on to it. Like I said, it's what I'd want."

Sara grasped it gratefully, noticing as she did that someone had taken extra care to thoroughly clean it. The gesture both heartened and hurt. Sure, all hints of fingerprint dust and chemicals had been washed away, but so had any last remaining trace of him. The ring positively gleamed now almost a little too new. Like it hadn't spent the last week on his finger at all.

But before Sara's thoughts could wander too far down that road, Catherine held out something else to her.

"And this -" she offered, extending a familiar small notebook, the one Sara knew to be Grissom's sketchbook. For while he'd long ago filled the first book she had given him for Christmas six years before, Sara had been the one to first encourage the practice.

Although she had seem him with this particular volume plenty over the past few months, and while she may have peered over his shoulder as he scribbled or drew a time or two, Sara hadn't flipped through its contents since her first night aboard the _Ishmael_.

Not that she hadn't been tempted, sorely tempted, truth be told. But upon repeatedly reassuring herself that if he had wanted her to take in the book's contents he would have gladly shown her himself (which he had done and more than once), for the most part, Sara had resisted the temptation to snoop.

From the sheepish look Catherine was currently giving her, Catherine hadn't been able to resist.

"I didn't log it into evidence. Didn't think the others needed to go through it," a somewhat penitent Catherine offered by way of explanation.

Sara couldn't fault Catherine's curiosity, or Catherine having technically tampered with evidence, as she had been doing much the same mere moments before. But she could and did appreciate Catherine's discretion.

"Thanks," Sara said and meant it.

Catherine let out an intentionally light, "Who knew the man was such an artist? But then he always was full of surprises."

Sara almost chuckled. "You have no idea."

"Sara -"

"Yeah?"

Expectantly, Sara lifted her gaze from the book in her hand back to Catherine's face and waited.

The reply never came.

However wanting to tell Sara they were going to find Grissom, that everything is going to be okay, Catherine couldn't quite seem to heave what very soon might prove a lie past the knot in her throat.

No matter how hard that truth might be to swallow, Sara respected Catherine for this.

"Yeah," she nodded.

As Catherine turned to go, Sara stopped her with a question of her own. "What was the book?"

"Book?" echoed Catherine.

"The book Hannah was reading when they picked her up. It's not here."

Catherine paused to consider this. That detail hadn't seemed all that particularly important then or now.

"It was some sort of classic. Something strange..." her voice trailed off as she continued to think about it.

" _Moby Dick_ ," she finally replied. "Definitely strange for a chemistry post doc."

 _Not that strange_ , Sara thought but did not say.

Or coincidence either. Not that anyone but her - and Grissom - were likely to know that.

Recalling all too well the crux of Melville's famous tale, Sara wondered if Hannah and her white whale would find the same fate.

xxxxxxx

Ostensibly needing to stretch her legs and clear her head, Sara took the long way to the locker room. No matter how bone weary she might be, she didn't want to sit still, stand still, stop. For if she did, she knew all the dismay she had labored all of that day to keep at bay would at last engulf her.

Dread possibilities would give way to fear. There would be no breathing then. No choking back tears. The losing would begin.

Hugging herself against the chill, far more emotional than physical though it might be, Sara paced the halls, eying everyone else hard at work: Greg and Hodges in the garage, Archie still reviewing CCTV footage, Henry in DNA. Mandy bent over her computer screen.

It was hard, so hard, to stay on this side of the glass. Hard not to be able to do anything but watch and wait and worry. Hard not to be short, to resist the urge to rush things along.

Especially as Sara couldn't quite recall tests ever taking this long before. She knew they took time, of course she did, despite what one might see on TV these days. Only it felt like time they didn't have.

If they still had any time at all.

And maybe, just maybe, they might be chasing their own tails, always ending up with little more than dead ends, but at least the others could do _something_.

Sara desperately wanted to be out there doing _something_ , even if she didn't have the faintest of ideas of where out there was.

 _Eyes, no hands._ Catherine's instructions had never felt so claustrophobically restrictive. Ever since they'd brought Hannah in, Sara had felt trapped, trapped on the other side of the glass and never more impotent in her life.

Perhaps that explained the horrified look Grissom had worn that day when he'd been locked on the other side of that door while Adam Trent had pressed a shard of pottery against her neck. And why not long after he had shown up at her apartment desperate to find his fears and nightmares unfounded.

Even trapped under that damn car there had been something Sara could do. Not like now, when there was nothing.

It was as if she were one of those blue bottle flies, the ones whom despite the window being open, continued to persevere in beating their heads against the glass.

Sadly, it wasn't an entirely foreign feeling. The months after Natalie happened had been filled with days and weeks spent feeling much that same way. When she couldn't seem to breathe - or think - or be - or anything.

She had told Grissom this once, in an attempt to explain why she had gone; why she had stayed away for so long.

For his part, Grissom had simply nodded and murmured "Blue bottle" in reply.

"Blue bottle?" Sara echoed.

"You ever watch a blue bottle fly trapped in a room? Even if you open the window, he'll keep trying to fly through the glass. He keeps beating his head, beating his head, beating his head and getting nowhere and nothing but a headache."

"Insects as the source for all wisdom," Sara half scoffed.

Grissom recited knowingly, "' _God in his wisdom made the fly. And then forgot to tell us why._ '"

"Your point, Gilbert?"

"Simple," he replied. "Sometimes you have to stop in order to find your way out."

Only in the here and now, Sara didn't feel like the fly tilting against a window pane, but rather the blue bottle in the bell jar with no way out at all.

Having finally reached the locker room, she banged open her locker with every bit of her pent up blue bottle futility. Which ultimately served no purpose at all except to cause the few pictures left taped inside to shudder and nearly fall.

In a hurry as she had been in at the time, Sara hadn't bothered to stop to clean out her locker before rushing off to the airport more than two months before. She had meant to while back in Vegas for the trial; she just hadn't gotten around to it yet.

Thus the space remained exactly as she had left it, vest, spare change of clothes, photos and all. The empty spaces, too, remained from where the pictures of her and Grissom had once hung pre-divorce. She'd never managed to find the time to fill them. But the sight struck her hard, as if the last few months had never happened.

Part of her wondered as she stood there, if it would it had been better if they hadn't. If she hadn't gone and brought him back.

Then Hannah would have never had the chance -

He could be safe on his boat right now. Perhaps missing her and she'd be missing him, but at least he wouldn't be...

Be what exactly?

 _Hurt?_

 _Missing?_

 _Dead?_

Yet Sara found herself too selfish to readily wish away those last few past precious months.

Taking a deep breath to still her racing thoughts, she peered down at the slender volume, the one she had come to put away.

Despite it being right there in her hands, she couldn't bring herself to peer inside. Not that she thought her husband would mind; she knew he wouldn't. But she couldn't handle seeing the world through his eyes, not now, not knowing it might be the last of him she'd ever get to hold.

Still, she clutched it to her, wishing with all her heart she might be holding him instead.

Sara considered secreting Grissom's wedding ring in her tote along with the book, but she wanted to keep it - and him - close.

Then she recalled the simple chain and pendant she had absently put on that morning and how back in Costa Rica before they had been married the first time, she had worn Grissom's grandmother's ring about her neck. At least this way she'd get to keep a part of him close to her heart.

Only her hands shook so bad as she tried to string the simple band on the chain that it slipped through her fingers and began to roll along the floor. Swiftly dropping to her knees, Sara scrambled after it, hoping to catch it up before it could lodge itself into a corner out of reach.

Grasping the cold metal hard in her hand, Sara settled exhausted against the lockers.

Part of her wanted to sob; part of her wanted to scream. Neither she was certain would do any good. It didn't matter that tired of trying to hold it all together, all Sara really wanted to do was fall apart.

God, she really needed him right now.

It took every bit of strength she had left not to burst into tears.


	15. Fifteen: Mr Grissom Regrets

**Fifteen: Mr. Grissom Regrets**

There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to murder and create,

And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions...

Half there, half not, the words floated in and out in that ever more daunting dark.

Unsurprisingly perhaps as Grissom had spent his whole life believing that - that there would be time and time and time enough for everything: life, love, happiness.

And why not? Didn't everyone promise _always_ and _forever_ and eternities? And tomorrows and tomorrows and tomorrows as if there were no end of them?

Only now Gil Grissom knew his life wasn't to be measured out in J. Alfred Prufrock's coffee spoons, but in breaths and beats.

Two - maybe three - billion beats, that's how long the human heart was built to last. Most creatures, from mighty whale to miniature mouse only lasted about a billion, humans originally maybe two. It was only the differing heart rates that determined just how long in minutes and hours and days and years those beats would pass.

That little mouse, with its little heart frenetically beating somewhere between 300 and 800 beats per minute, could depending on the species, only expect to live between a year and three. And no wonder that great blue whale, with its great big 400 pound heart beating a slow and steady 10 whole beats a minute, could live long past a hundred years if left unmolested.

Grissom vaguely wondered if that might be the real origins of the human perception of time. After all, it couldn't entirely be coincidence that the average human heart beat 60 beats per minute at rest. Made sense really to divide the day that way.

Of course if time could be counted out in heartbeats, time, itself, must really be a far far different proposition for those slow beating whales. Mathematically their minutes each took six of man's. While time to a hummingbird must race along nearly two hundred times as fast each and every time they took to wing.

Maybe. Maybe not.

He was having a hard enough time wrapping his head around his own heartbeat.

What Grissom was certain of was he didn't need to be able to do the math to know with his regular resting 70 beats per minute, he'd long spent his two billion beats.

And yet, people tended to think of time as infinite.

Wasn't it Robert Browning who had maintained, "What is time? Leave time now for dogs and apes! Man has forever!"?

Only when in truth, a human life proved almost inconsequentially finite, each barely a breath in the great span of the universe, really as brief as that dash that separated birth and death on a headstone.

Strange really how people marked an entire life as merely two dates simply separated by nothing more than a thin white line. As if only birth and death counted, when in reality it was the middle which mattered most.

Still -

 _The life of man is but a moment of existence._

The Venerable Bede had realized that fact far more than a millennium ago.

The Romans, too, maintained _Tempus fugit_ \- time flees.

And it did. Time passed so fast, though it seldom seemed to do so at the time.

No wonder he'd been so careless with it.

You would think, Grissom rued, after seeing all he'd seen everyday for all those days and years he'd spend as a CSI he would have known better. Known how short life really was. And how quickly it could all be gone. That tomorrow was never a given.

Yes, he should have known that.

He should have known he - _they_ \- could not have forever.

Likely, he and Sara would not even have the tomorrow of the day just after this one.

At least he would not. Not if even his crude calculations could be counted on.

Yet somehow he'd still thought up until that very morning Hannah had taken him that he would have a lifetime yet to show Sara his heart.

Never once had he imagined that that lifetime could prove so short.

No, somehow he hadn't learned.

After everything the two of them had been through throughout the years, he had still believed there would always be time - ages, and ages, and years and decades of time yet. Years to make up for the lost last few years. Years to finally find the words to tell her all the whispers of his heart, all the thoughts and hopes and dreams she'd long inspired, years and years and years yet to come.

Sadly, _forever_ and _always_ ultimately ended in no time at all.

No, he hadn't had near enough time.

Maybe he never would, never could, have anywhere near enough.

Though he knew he'd already gotten far more than he had ever earned, let alone deserved.

After all, "The butterfly counts not months, but moments, and has time enough," as Rabindranath Tagore maintained.

Keats, too, had had a point when he'd written to Fannie Browne:

I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days —

three such days with you I could fill with more delight

than fifty common years could ever contain.

Grissom would give anything for three such days now.

He had however gotten one thing he'd asked for: some time to prepare. Even if said time consisted more of minutes and hours than the days and weeks and months he would have wanted.

Yet he would have a little while yet, not much, but some, before the cold completely took the rest of his already wandering mind with it.

Besides, it wasn't like he hadn't done much of what he'd once told Sara he most wanted to do: visit the rainforest again, reread _Moby Dick_ , and while not in any way official, he had in all those weekend chess matches in Paris's Jardin du Luxembourg played in quite the international chess tournament of sorts.

Though the most important reason for that last brief bit of time he knew he wouldn't get: that one last chance to say good-bye to the ones he loved the most.

No, he would never get a chance to say good-bye to Sara, Sara whom he had loved so long, if not always so well. To the woman he'd proven lucky enough to love for the rest of his life, however short that life might now prove.

Grissom wasn't entirely surprised to discover this. He had worked enough crime scenes to know that despite what you saw on T.V. or in the movies, getting to say that one last final good-bye to those you loved in reality proved rather rare.

Too often death came in a moment.

It had been like that with his own father after all.

Yes, it had been a naive wish.

Death came no matter whether or not you got that one last chance.

Not that either of them had ever managed to learn how to say good-bye in the first place.

Besides, Grissom knew he wasn't ready, not the least bit ready, to say good-bye to his wife or their life. He hadn't been that day in Vegas when Sara had said as much all those years - was it really nearly ten now? - to him after they had so nearly lost Brass. He certainly wasn't now. Not with Sara back beside him again.

No, not ready at all.

It wasn't that he was afraid of death.

Death, dying, neither scared him. Not really.

After all, if life proved anything, it proved lethal.

Besides, considering how he had lived so much of his life in death's shadow, ever since that day when he was nine really, it wasn't like he hadn't been on intimate terms with death for decades.

Unable to stop or undo death, he'd spent much of his life trying to understand it. And he did to some degree. The science and mechanics of it, certainly. Decay and decomposition, definitely.

For one, he knew upon the moment of his death, when heart and lungs and brain finally ceased to function, his body too would experience the abrupt, almost minuscule loss of 21 grams. No more than the three quarters of an ounce. Or the weight of almost four American quarters. Or four sheets of paper. The mass of a soul, or so they said.

But how could the sum total of a life - an experience - a universe entire - only amount to 21 grams?

As for what happened to said soul after, science was still mostly silent.

Practically speaking though, upon death, Grissom knew he would become _The body_. _The victim_. No longer himself.

Not that it would matter much to him, him being dead and all at the time.

Yes, he would be just another meaningless death in a city of meaningless deaths.

Though perhaps not entirely meaningless. Sara, he knew, would follow his wishes to have his body donated, consigned to the body farm where worms and his beloved bugs would feast on him and he would still, could still, even when gone, be part of the science he'd prized so highly.

He only prayed Sara wouldn't be the one who found him. Not like this.

It may have been years, years since his finding Debbie Marlin posed on that shower room floor. Still. Silent. Definitely gone. And yet resembling far, far too much another young, lithe, beautiful woman he knew. Years and years and yet Gil Grissom could recall with near heart pounding clarity, his horror; the fear. And the relief, that sweet, yet gut twisting not quite believing relief, once he had spied Sara Sidle alive and well on the other side of that yellow crime scene tape.

Then there had been that moment which had felt nearly a lifetime all its own when all he could do was stand there on the other side of the glass, desperate -pleading - begging - for the guard to open the door as Adam Trent dug a pottery shard deeper and deeper into Sara's neck. No wonder that precise moment still haunted his nightmares.

But it had been the desert, that great expanse of empty dunes where he had come the closest, searching but not finding, time passing, temperature rising, hoping against hope even as hope began to fade each time the shifting sands blew any sign of Sara away. The finally finding. Those first breathless moments of not knowing, only fearing. Her so still, so slight and small and crumpled that he'd thought - believed - he'd lost her after all. The incomprehensible relief in that moment when her eyes had found his in the rescue helicopter.

No, he did not want her to be the one.

It would be bad enough, hard enough, with his body in the morgue. Not that they would need to trouble Sara with the I.D. There were still at least a dozen people in the building who knew him well enough. But Sara would be there, he knew. Would insist on it, stubborn as she was.

Strong, too.

Sara Sidle was the toughest person he knew. She'd had to be.

If anyone had been born a survivor, it was she. And she would survive this, too, he knew, however it ended.

Not that this was the end he would have wanted.

Though he supposed any way was a bad way to die when you didn't want to die.

And the last thing he ever wanted to do was leave her.

That and a part of him had rather relished, however somewhat selfishly, the thought of spending his last moments warm and safe in his wife's arms.

 _His wife -_

God was he glad now he had suggested they get married again the week before.

He supposed they could have gotten hitched in Vegas. The city was the wedding capital of the world after all, but somehow it just felt right, better, to be married in San Francisco. Even if that meant he'd had to accept Sara's repeated ribbing about his being uncharacteristically sentimental about the whole thing.

At least back here in Vegas she would have help, the support and comfort of her friends. They would all take good care of her, of this he was certain. Perhaps there was some scant comfort of his own to be had in that fact.

Death was always hardest on those left behind. The dead were long past caring.

He would live on in her heart and her memories. That was all the immortality he had ever wanted - or needed.

He hoped her knowing he loved her would prove some comfort, however slight.

Yet still he worried.

And perhaps not without cause. However nearly fifty years on, Grissom hadn't forgotten how inconsolable his mother had been after his father had so suddenly died. He understood, too, how even after all that time, Betty Grissom still loved and missed her husband. That his mother had chosen to spend the rest of her life content with the comfort of memories.

Only one week married again and made a widow, Grissom didn't want that for his wife. Not for Sara, not for his Sara, the one whom he had been so thrilled to see smiling and laughing and loving and living again.

Just the night before she had been laughing - screaming - at the top of her lungs, too, both in fright and delight - as they had dove and climbed and rattled along the metal rails of The Big Apple Coaster.

At the sheer happiness of that memory Grissom only wished he would have suggested a ride together a long time ago. He'd shared one with Warrick once after all. Though in some ways, he was glad he had shared what was likely to be his last with his wife.

Yes, that was what he wanted for Sara: life and joy, happiness, love and most of all peace, that sweet peace only she had given him. No death and grief for her.

Sara had already had mourning enough.

No, he didn't want to do that to her. Though he had the feeling he might not much longer have that choice.

After all, wasn't it Catullus who maintained: _Cum semel occidit brevis lux, nox est perpetua una dormienda_. When once the brief light has set, an eternal night must be slept?

And Shakespeare who'd said, "We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep"?

Not that that Bard knew any better than Grissom what might happen after.

"To sleep: perchance to dream," Hamlet had said,

aye, there's the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

when we have shuffled off this mortal coil...

Though none of that really mattered. Not when all too soon Grissom would have go where Sara could not follow, not for a long, long while yet, he prayed. Not down that road of Ariwara No Narihara's

Which some say we all travel

I have heard before,

Yet I never expected

to take it so soon myself.

So no, it wasn't fear, that dread of something after death, which gave Grissom pause. Death came to everyone in the end.

It was regret.

Not for loving Sara. Never.

Never once.

Instead, regret for all the wasted time. Too much time. Too much life.

For all the years he could have had with her if he hadn't been such a moron, a coward and a fool. Hadn't been so well intentioned. So afraid. Which was perhaps much the same thing in the end.

Regret, too, for all those years of loving yet so soon to be completely lost. They had but barely begun again. And yet he hoped these last few months together would be what she would most remember; that she would leave out all the rest.

Strangely, as his mind continued to falter and his body weakened, as time and life slipped further and further away, Grissom found perhaps for the first time in his life that he knew exactly what he most wanted to say.

It didn't matter that Sara wasn't here to hear them. His heart spoke them anyway.

 _Sara -_

 _Honey -_

 _These past few months, they've been - I don't have the words for it -_

 _But then you've always left me more than a little speechless._

 _Not that you didn't already know that._

 _I'm not so sure though that you do know that you really are my first waking thought and my last before sleep. And in all the hours in between you manage to fill my life with something far, far better than any dream._

 _We've never been good at good-byes, you and I, so I won't try now._

 _The truth is I'm not ready. Not yet. Probably not ever. But certainly not yet._

 _Know, too, I wouldn't trade this life with you for anything. Except perhaps a chance for more time with you._

 _Lifetimes. How I wish we had lifetimes and lifetimes yet, you and I. And not just this one. Then perhaps there might be time and time enough for me to tell you then everything you've meant to me._

 _Just know that I love you._

 _In truth I do. Beyond all sense and reason. Beyond knowing. Beyond needing to know._

 _I just do, Love. Love you who make old words new and anything possible. You who have for so long been the very best of my life._

 _Sara, I know I don't deserve you._

 _And I am sorry, I am. For so many things. For leaving you like this. For wasting so many years we could have had together you and I._

 _I should have fought for you. For us. Even then._

 _You were worth it. You_ **are** _worth it._

 _Never doubt that._

 _But I am grateful, too._

 _For what time and life we've had._

 _For you most of all._

 _Fortunate. That's what I've been. Not lucky, but fortunate. So fortunate. Fortunate to have met you. Fortunate to have known you. Fortunate to love you - however imperfectly as I have. Fortunate most of all, to be loved by you._

 _Be safe, my dear._

 _I know these next few hours and days and years will be hard. But remember this (with my apologies for the borrowed words. Whitman really did say it best):_

 _Missing me one place search another,_

 _I stop somewhere waiting for you._

 _Peace, Love, peace, that precious peace you've always given me._

 _Always, Sara._

Always.

xxxxxxx

A/N: For more on Grissom and Sara's last night together before Hannah happened see "(Yet) Another Day at the Office," the third and final chapter of _(Not) Your Usual Ups and Downs._

As for my own regrets, I must admit now that our temperatures have begun to dip into the morgue freezer range that I'm beginning to feel a slight twinge of remorse for opting to have Hannah lock Grissom in that freezer. It didn't seem quite so unpleasant a fate during the writing of this. Mind you it was a balmy 85 degrees at the time _._

On a more personal note, as we get set to give thanks this week in the US, I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude for you - my ever faithful and frequently long suffering readers. My stories are nothing without your reading to bring them to life.


	16. Sixteen: Missing (Out)

**Sixteen: Missing (Out)**

"You're scary when you're quiet. You both are."

From her place on the locker room floor, Sara started.

Without bothering to ask what she was doing down there, Greg Sanders took a seat beside her. That it took Sara a moment to compose herself enough to answer, Greg pretended not to notice.

"I saw what Haskell taking Gloria did to Ray," Sara eventually replied. "I don't want to go there. I can't go there. It's what Hannah wants.

"And I'm not giving her that - not this time -"

 _Not with him missing._

 _He was just missing,_ she reminded herself.

"Could really use him right now," she sighed.

"Quotes, bad puns and all."

"They can be pretty bad."

"Helpful though - occasionally," Greg admitted, taking in how having finally managed to fasten Grissom's wedding band about her neck for safekeeping, Sara had begun worrying her own wedding ring again.

Greg hadn't been the first to notice the return of that simple gold band to her left hand. In truth, he hadn't managed to notice it at all that afternoon Sara been in to review evidence with the Deputy District Attorney. It had been Lindsey who'd first mentioned it, Morgan who had knowingly concurred and Greg who'd simply proved dumbfounded.

The three of them had been on their way out to their respective vehicles after yet another long shift when they caught sight of Sara climbing out of the passenger side of her Prius, a tote bag slung over shoulder and her looking far more relaxed and happier than any of them had seen her look in years.

Tan, fresh faced, and far more freckled, with her curls honeyed with the sun, Sara didn't just glow - she beamed.

She was halfway on her way to the front door when upon abruptly returning to her car, she popped her head back in the driver's side window.

From her grin when she finally emerged and began to saunter off again, Grissom must have called her back for a kiss.

 _Well wonders never ceased,_ they all thought.

At the door, Sara paused, pulling her phone from her pocket to check a text. Her grin only grew as she typed her reply before heading inside.

"I've got to go to Paris," Morgan sighed. "They've been back how many weeks now and she's still smiling."

"You planning on taking Grissom with you?" asked Greg.

"No. Why?"

Greg shot her a cheeky _Do I really need to spell it out for you?_ look which Morgan wisely opted to utterly ignore.

"Well, they are newlyweds," Lindsey sagely surmised.

"Newly _what_?" sputtered Greg.

"You didn't notice the ring?" Lindsey asked.

"What ring?"

"The wedding ring on her left hand," Lindsey continued ever patiently to explain.

At his still vacant expression, Morgan laughed. "Apparently not."

To which Lindsey only shook her head and muttered a dismissive " _Boys_!" under her breath.

"Hey!" an affronted Greg exclaimed.

Morgan rolled her eyes. "And you call yourself a CSI."

Even Hodges seemed to know more than he did, as the next day, when the topic had come up during their nightly meal break, Dave offered in that annoying ever-knowing way of his, "Well I'm not surprised. They looked awfully cozy last time I saw them together."

Greg nearly groaned, then testily uttered what he'd heard quite a few of his colleagues say over the years when pique with the frequently insufferable trace tech: "Do you do any actual work around here, Hodges?"

Perhaps Greg shouldn't have been so surprised. It wasn't like he hadn't known where Sara had gone, at least in a general sort of way.

After all, he'd been the one to text her when she hadn't shown up for shift.

Not that he'd gotten a ready reply to any of his queries. His earlier messages:

 **GREG**

 **Today** 12:20 AM

What you not planning on

coming in tonight boss?

 **Today** 3:30 AM

You okay?

 **Today** 7:08 AM

Sara?

went unanswered until rather late the next morning.

Greg having spent much of his night compulsively checking his phone, by the time he and Lindsey were walking out to leave for the day, Lindsey couldn't help but curiously quip, "Waiting to hear back from a hot date?"

"Sara," he absently replied.

Lindsey gave his arm a reassuring patted. "Sara's a big girl. I wouldn't worry too much if I were you."

But it was that knowing look of Lindsey's that really riled. That knowing look she'd been wearing even at the start of that night when Sara had initially opted not to show up for shift.

She and he and Morgan had been sitting around the break room table waiting for the evening assignments to be handed out. And waiting. And waiting far past the usual hour.

"Where's Sara?" Morgan asked, with yet another glance at the time on her phone.

It wasn't like Sara to ever be late, particularly as she was now boss.

"Dunno," Greg replied. "I haven't seen her."

Both turned to the newbie in their midst. Lindsey paused long enough in her far too casual sipping of her tea to say, "Last I saw her, she said she was heading home."

Greg knew there had to be more to it than that and was about to press when a harried looking Ecklie strode in the night's assignments in hand.

With none of the usual niceties nor any explanations, he immediately launched in: "Greg you've got a smash-and-grab at a convenience store off Industrial.

"Morgan, Lindsey, I want you to cover a multi-victim assault over on Fremont Street outside the Golden Nugget. Sounds like a bachelor party gone a little too wild.

"Any questions?"

Ultimately it was Morgan who elected to address the elephant in the room; Greg had to admire her pluck. "Uh, yeah. Where's Sara?"

"She... She had... something to take care of," was all Ecklie offered by way of reply.

Which really wasn't an answer and they all knew it. But the sheriff's tone and mien clearly brooked no further inquiries.

That and he left with an equally hurried, "Any problems during shift you know how to reach me."

Greg and Morgan gaped after him; Lindsey, on the other hand, looked inordinately pleased with herself for some reason Greg couldn't even begin to fathom.

Morgan noticed this too. "You know something."

Lindsey only grinned.

"Spill, Willows," Greg insisted.

"About Sara?" Lindsey shrugged before heading off to grab her coat. "My bet: she followed the evidence."

xxxxxxx

That morning before Greg could manage to get in another round of grill the rookie, his phone buzzed in his hand.

"Finally!" he exclaimed, leaving Lindsey chuckling as he turned away, the better to devote his entire attention to the incoming text.

 **SARA**

 **Today** 11:00 AM

If it wasn't so late I'd ask what

you were doing texting on

company time

Greg swiftly typed his reply:

 **Greg**

 **Today** 11:00 AM

You're not dead

 **Sara**

Of course I'm not dead

Then before he could ask any further Sara inquired -

 **Sara**

Why would I be dead?

 **Greg**

Dunno. Only reason I could

come up with why you wouldn't

be at work when you were

scheduled to come in

There was a long silence on Sara's end before she typed:

 **Sara**

Something came up

Greg was starting to get a pretty good idea where this was heading.

 **Greg**

Something or someone?

Sara didn't deign to reply.

Which only meant one thing: _Grissom_.

Yep. He should have known.

Thus he next texted:

 **Greg**

You coming back?

This time her reply came back quickly.

 **Sara**

I believe the official term is

indefinite leave of absence

 **Greg**

And what no good-bye?

Greg, only half-feigning hurt, chuckled at her reply:

 **Sara**

You'd like it too much.

Besides it wasn't like Sara had ever been good at good-byes. She tended to show up out of the blue and then disappear that way too.

 **Greg**

Just answer me one question

It was another full minute before Sara typed what even from a mere text seemed a hesitant:

 **Sara**

OK

 **Greg**

You happy?

He'd barely sent the message when her response flashed on his screen.

 **Sara**

Very

 **Greg**

Okay then

He was about to further comment when Sara texted:

 **Sara**

Try and stay out of trouble

Greg laughed.

 **Greg**

Shouldn't I be the one

telling you that?

 **Sara**

And if Catherine comes back

don't give her too hard a time

 **Greg**

I thought you weren't going

to say good-bye

 **Sara**

Good-bye Greg

Though she punctuated the text with a winking smiley face.

Greg sighed, typed:

 **Greg**

I hope he knows he doesn't

deserve you

It had to be said. Though Sara it seemed didn't agree.

 **Sara**

Good-bye Greg

Perhaps not unsurprisingly, there was no smiley face the second time.

As he wasn't entirely sure how long it would be before he saw Sara Sidle again, Greg Sanders decided to cut his losses and hopefully keep his friend.

 **Greg**

Bye Sara

xxxxxxx

At least Greg had the pleasure of springing the news on a definitely unsuspecting Nick Stokes that Thanksgiving Day, which admittedly had proved rather satisfying.

"Don't think you've heard latest," he began after the usual preliminaries. "Sara got married again."

Nick's "To Who?" was accordingly incredulous.

Considering all of Sara's previously decrying marriage as a form of property exchange and her general disdain for tradition, Stokes had been rather surprised when she had gotten married the first time.

After her not entirely pleasant split from Grissom, Nick hadn't really figured she'd be all that ready and willing to take the plunge again. Heck, he hadn't once managed to persuade her to even consider going out with any number of the perfectly eligible guys he knew.

"Yeah, right. Real funny, Greg."

"I'm not joking," Greg insisted. "She's even got the ring to prove it."

"Who to?"

"Same guy as last time."

Greg could imagine the shake of the head that went with the native Texan's drawl of "I'll be damned. So much for some things ending.

"And yet," Nick chuckled, "why am I not surprised? She okay then?"

"You remember how she was that first time she showed up back from Paris?" Greg asked.

"Yeah -"

"Imagine that times ten and you'll get the idea."

"Well, tell her congrats from me."

"Tell her yourself," Greg countered. "Oh, and don't worry, Grissom and I already had a little talk."

Nick whistled. "You didn't."

"Did."

Nick sounded both shocked and impressed all at once.

Though he brought Greg a little bit back to earth when he asked, "And what about you and -"

Greg cut Nick off with an all too nonchalant, "Still a work in progress."

This time Greg really could hear his former colleague's rueful shake of the head. "Come on. Isn't it about time you grew a pair, man? What have you got to lose?"

 _Plenty_ , Greg thought.

"You know, sometimes the geek gets the girl. Our two apparent lovebirds a perfect case in point."

"Geek?" Greg stammered as if to ask _Me_?

"Accept it my man. Some men are born geeks. Some achieve geekdom. Others have geek thrust upon them. Embrace the geek.

"Like I said, apparently it worked for Grissom."

"Uh huh."

Catching sight of Morgan about to pack up her things to go, Greg said into his phone, "I gotta go."

"Eat some turkey for me. I'm stuck at the office all night."

"Sucks to be boss," Greg quipped, not feeling the least bit sorry for Stokes.

He felt even less sorry when Nick replied, "All the girls in bikinis at the beach more than make up for it."

Miffed, Greg didn't even bother with a good-bye.

"Who was that?" Morgan asked when Greg quickly caught up with her.

"Nick."

"And you guys say we girls gossip," she tsked.

xxxxxxx

For a long while, Greg and Sara simply sat there on the unforgiving locker room floor in a sympathetic sort of silence. That was until Greg got up the nerve to ask: "I assume you were actually planning on telling us at some point."

He indicated the ring Sara hadn't stopped nervously fiddling with.

"Or were we just supposed to follow the evidence?" he asked.

Sara's lips twitched. "We were planning on breaking the news at breakfast in a couple of hours.

"Thought we'd tell you in person this time."

"Romantic wedding in Paris," gushed Greg. "However did you find the time with all those bodies you kept running into?"

Dismissing his jibe about their body finding antics, Sara corrected, "Not Paris. San Francisco."

"San Francisco?"

Sara nodded. "November's shark season. We were there with a tagging and population survey.

"You wouldn't think it, but thirty-five miles off the coast along the Farallones Islands, lies Shark Alley, one of the best places in the world to observe great white shark group feeding behavior in the wild."

Though Greg looked a little green at the prospect, Sara plowed on.

"They've been studying the effects of large scale commercial fishing on seal and therefore shark populations there for years now.

"Seals being the Scooby snack of choice for great whites," she explained. "Eat one and you're good for a week."

Sara then went on to describe how Grissom, with his steady hands and eagle-eyed aim, proved to be a master at shark darting.

"A bit like having your ears pierced," she said of the process by which they attached various sorts of tags: acoustic, pop-up and real-time satellite, to the fins of the sharks they encountered.

Not that locating said sharks proved easy exactly.

Unlike the movies, one didn't search for the plow of a dorsal fin across the water (dorsal fins having the tendency to sunburn if exposed too much to sunlight). Rather one searched for the dark, shark-like shadows prowling just beneath the surface.

When the weather cooperated, they made use of spotter planes to help inform the boat as to where to search. The Bay's frequent wind, rain and habitual fog however had made for several late starts and plenty of no-goes.

With her well-honed eye for detail (searching for trace evidence for the better part of nearly the last two decades did have its non crime fighting uses), Sara handled the individual IDs and kept up the regional _Carcharodon carcharias_ Digital Yearbook, the collection of photos, video, tracking data (when available), biological identifiers, measurements, sex and age determinations, sighting encounter descriptions and known cohorts, as well as health, genetic and other biological data assembled on every shark in the area.

Plus, she'd had the pleasure, since custom decreed if you found it, you got to name it, of choosing just the right moniker for several new stalwart females and a plucky young male. That the names of real people were of course not permitted, did manage, however, to spoil a bit of her fun.

Abruptly realizing she had been nervously babbling for the better part of two minutes, Sara promptly shut up.

To which Greg, who hadn't managed to get a word in edgewise the whole time, only quipped, "I think I'll stick to _Shark Week_ , thanks."

"Coward," Sara teased in effort to regain a bit of her dignity. "You aren't afraid of a toilet, are you?"

Having not the slightest clue where this line of questioning could possibly be headed, Greg let out a long reluctant "No."

"More people are injured or killed in the U.S. in the course of toilet-based accidents than are attacked by sharks. Toilets injure 200,000 people a year.

"In the last hundred years, only a little more than a hundred people were injured in encounters with great whites and out of that, only 15 were fatal.

"You're seventy-six times more likely to be struck by lightening than to be killed by a shark. Even worldwide, your chance of shark attack is only one in 37 _million_.

"Far more humans are killed by falling coconuts. Heck, you have a better chance at death by toaster or dying of the flu.

"Sharks have far more to fear from humans, than humans have of them.

"Shark finning alone kills more than 11,000 sharks an _hour_. A hundred million a year. And that's not counting the sharks that get caught up as bycatch or are slaughtered out of ignorant fear.

"Which is completely stupid. Sharks aren't scary. Well, modern ones aren't.

"I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to run into a _Carcharodon megalodon_ while out for a swim. Not with their seven-inch teeth and six-foot wide mouths. Not to mention they grew to length of a basketball court and weighed over 40 tons. The largest predatory fish ever discovered. Thankfully, it died out more than two million years ago."

"Thankfully," echoed Greg.

"But great whites aren't scary.

"In reality, they tend to be laid back, calm creatures, even remarkably shy. Curious, too. And very secretive.

"As actual great white mating has never be observed, we don't even know where they go to mate. Hence the sat tags," Sara offered.

 _They could even be a little sexy, in that bad boy sort of way_ , Sara thought, but she didn't see the need to tell Greg that.

"Nothing like _Jaws_ at all," she said instead. "Did you know Peter Benchley, the book's author spent much of the later years of his life campaigning for the preservation of sharks?

"For good reason, too. As apex predators, sharks, particularly great whites, help control the balance of oceanic ecosystems.

"The wholesale killing of sharks off the coast of Australia led to a massive coral die off as without the sharks to feed on the fish that fed on the fish that kept the algae in check, the coral-killing algae thrived.

"Shark death can affect seafood, too. Killing too many sharks means there's no one around to keep rays from eating all the scallops. Less food for the plate. Plus, as scallops serve as natural seawater filters, less scallops means murkier water.

"It's all connected."

It was at the very end of this recitation when Sara realized she was doing it again. She couldn't help it. Sharks were far easier a discussion topic than missing husbands.

In addition, as Grissom's sometimes odd enthusiasms really did prove contagious, it had been easy, so easy to get caught up in his elasmobrachological obsessions.

But then it always had been, no matter the subject, his near pathological curiosity being something which had always attracted her to him.

Ultimately though his present oceanic investigations really weren't all that different than the work he'd he did all those years on land. Grissom really was a sort of CSI at sea, just as officer Scinta had described him to Sara. He merely pursued a very different sort of serial killer these days.

He still spoke for the dead - the living, too. For as sharks and whales and fish and the great wide ocean - like the dead - cannot speak for themselves, someone had to before they were all dead and gone. With 95% of ocean life as yet left to be discovered, there was good reason to try and save it.

 _Besides,_ Sara not infrequently mused, _whatever was wrong with trying to save the world?_

Sara certainly would have much rather stayed in San Francisco and continued to watch great whites dismembering seals than to come back to Vegas. Sharks were far more civilized about the whole thing than high profile defense attorneys.

"Anyway," Sara said, her tone softening away from the scientific, "it's where we first met - San Francisco."

Apropos, she supposed, that where it had all begun, they began again.

Abruptly her voice took on the fond, almost dreamy quality of pleasant remembrances. "We finally got to have dinner together there.

"Only took nearly eighteen years," she half laughed.

At Greg's curious glance, Sara shrugged. "Long story."

"So," said Greg, not above teasing himself, "you decided to celebrate by getting married. _Again_."

"Something like that," she conceded.

While it hadn't been quite _that_ simple, Greg wasn't all that far from the truth. The whole eloping late one sunny Friday afternoon probably would have appeared impulsive to an outsider.

Truth be told, it had come as a bit of a surprise to Sara, too.

xxxxxxx

A/N: For a fascinating true life read about the study and history of the great

whites of California's Shark Alley see Casey Susan's _The Devil's Teeth_ (2005).


	17. Seventeen: Cuddle Bugs

**Seventeen: Cuddle Bugs**

Sara Sidle certainly hadn't woken up that particular Friday expecting to get married.

She did, however, wake to the reassuringly regular in and exhale of Grissom's breath against her bare skin, to the warmth of him still snuggled up asleep alongside her, to the two of them curled up like a couple of quotation marks, his hand kept curved snug about her waist. It didn't matter that they currently had a king-sized bed at their disposal, these days, each rather liked to keep cuddled close.

Sara never had, in all the years of their divorce, managed to get into the habit of sleeping in the middle of the mattress. Sure, she might consciously start there, but by the time she woke, she found herself rolled over into her regular side. And then there had been times, too many times, when she, as yet still half asleep, could - would - imagine Grissom there sound asleep and snoring, despite the reality of the space beside her remaining as cold and empty as ever.

God, was it good instead to find him there again.

It didn't matter that she had roused to that particular pleasure every day for nearly two months now. Not enough time had passed (and too much time had passed with them apart) for her yet to take it - or him - for granted.

At the faint brush of lips and beard, the buzz of her name along the nape of her neck, she nestled nearer.

"Good morning," Grissom murmured, tugging her tighter to him.

It certainly was that, Sara had to agree.

"Was definitely a good night," she sighed.

In Grissom's opinion, _good_ was the understatement of all understatements.

Only before he could say as much, Sara sighed, "If I had known back then that you would do what you did to me last night, I _definitely_ would have invited you back to my place."

Grissom chuckled into her shoulder, seemingly more than a little smugly satisfied with himself, something Sara would have ragged him mercilessly about if his satisfaction hadn't in fact proved richly deserved.

While it might have surprised their former coworkers to discover that Gil Grissom was an affectionate man, let alone an ardent, eager, generous, and passionately thorough lover, he was.

Sara hadn't been stretching the truth that time she had unwittingly admitted to Catherine Willows - and David Hodges of all people - that she and Grissom had _great sex._ Frankly, _great sex_ didn't begin to describe it.

For no man knew how to touch her - love her - make love to her - like he did. Nor ever had.

"Please," Sara said, threading her fingers through his own, "tell me we don't have to be anywhere early this morning."

For judging from the quality of light, her not wanting to be bothered with rolling over to check the bedside clock, it could only be an hour, perhaps two past sunrise and since the two of them hadn't fallen asleep until well past midnight (although they had gone to bed some time before that), Sara wasn't all that keen on hastily jumping out of bed.

In fact, having been far too busy luxuriating in her memories of the night before, not to mention the pleasures of the current moment, Sara had yet to even begin to indulge in any thoughts of that day's possibilities.

"No, dear," Grissom laughed, himself in no hurry to surrender the comfort, the company or the closeness. After all, being together like this wasn't an altogether bad way to while away part of a day. "We've got plenty of time."

Sara might have been tempted to ask _Plenty of time for what?_ Only he'd chosen that moment to trail kisses along her shoulder to that spot just beneath her ear, the attention to which always drove her completely crazy.

And she knew he knew it.

" _Gil_ -"

At his blithe "Yes, dear?" it was her turn to laugh.

Swiftly Sara shifted to face him. Searching his features she asked, "What's - What's gotten into you?"

She thought perhaps it had been the night before. Or maybe it was just San Francisco.

While it might not be like Paris, The City of Love, The City by the Bay had always been close to her heart. After all, it had been where she and Gil Grissom had first met nearly too many years ago to count.

"Not," she hurriedly added at the nonplus look he was giving her, "that it's a bad thing. I - I just wouldn't have imagined it when we first met: you like this."

Grissom simply shrugged.

"Even insects are known to cuddle," he replied, ever matter-of-fact.

For a moment, Sara thought he had to be having her on.

From her own experience and Grissom's seemingly bottomless reservoir of all things entomological, insects were admittedly known to do quite a few things. Some far stranger than others. Cuddling, she had yet to hear of.

Therefore she had a hard time keeping the amused incredulity out of her: "Really?"

" _Really_ ," he insisted.

Sara waited for him to expostulate further, as he always did. It was part of his charm after all.

Grissom didn't disappoint.

"Male tree lobsters spoon their mates when they sleep," he said.

" _Tree lobsters_?" Sara echoed.

" _Dryococelus australis_. Otherwise known as the Lord Howe Island stick insect," he supplied.

"Still _tree lobster_?"

"Think more _Phasmatodea_ than _Crustacea_."

Taking up her hand, Grissom drew a line from the tip of her middle finger to the base of her thumb. "About yea big. And about two to three times the weight of the average cockroach.

"Fun," Sara muttered, far more acquainted with the latter species than she ever really wanted to be.

Ignoring this, Grissom continued, "Born bright green, they eventually molt into a black. While wingless, they can still move fairly fast when they want to."

 _Like cockroaches_ , Sara thought, but did not say.

"Were thought to have gone extinct in the 1920s. Locals liked to use them for fish bait. But mostly it was the alien rats that got them in the end.

"Then in 2001, a group of scientists surveying the flora and fauna on Ball's Pyramid, this volcanic stack part of the submerged continent of Zealandia, discovered a lone surviving population of 24 individuals under a single _Melaleuca howeana_ shrub.

"Two pairs were brought back to the Melbourne Zoo where their captive breeding program has produced more than 9,000 individuals.

"Although the species still holds the record for the world's rarest known insect."

"And it really cuddles?"

"It really does."

With a soft sigh, Sara shook her head.

"What?" Grissom asked askance.

She grinned. "I love it when you speak geek."

And yet while bugs weren't exactly romantic, at least not in any conventional sort of way, Grissom still managed to make them so.

"And I love you," Sara said, drawing him in for a kiss. "But two cold feet are more than plenty."

Which probably should have been the end of that.

Only Grissom's suddenly far more mischievous than curious arc of an eyebrow once they broke apart plainly challenged _Oh really?_

So plainly, Sara swiftly said, "Wait - Don't even think about it."

Too late.

One of his admittedly very cold feet had already begun to inch along her bare calf causing Sara to shriek, " _Gil_ -" as she struggled - and failed - to squirm out of its path.

" _Gil_ -" she chided, again to no avail. His toes having managed to make their way to that particularly sensitive spot skin just behind her knee, Sara shivered.

" _Gilbert_ -"

To which Gil Grissom only persevered in grinning ever broader.

Deliberately enunciating each syllable Sara insisted, "Remove. The. Foot. Now."

As yet undeterred, his blue eyes beaming even brighter, Grissom airily hazarded to challenge, "Or what?"

Which perhaps wasn't the wisest of things to do all things considered.

Although it may have been years, far more than a decade really now since Sara Sidle had trained in weaponless self defense, neither time nor real need or even any recent practice had done much to diminish her skills.

Thus before he knew it, Grissom found himself flat on his back, a particularly pleased with herself Sara having expertly - and instantly - pinned him to the bed.

Unlike Sara, however, there was no way he was about to protest his present predicament. Over the years he may have been quite the moron, coward and fool, but there was no way he was _that_ stupid.

Certainly not with her flushed, disheveled, slightly breathless and definitely naked above him as she was.

As Grissom's satisfied smirk slowly shifted into something far more appreciative, Sara found herself struggling once more, this time to keep her pursed lips from slipping into a smile of their own.

Knowing all too well that any further resistance was futile - resistance not exactly really on her mind at the moment in the first place - with one last mostly feigned sigh and a far more fond shake of the head, she simply surrendered.

She didn't even get the chance to mentally rue over whatever she was going to do with him.

Grissom was already intent on showing her just that.

xxxxxxx

Unsurprisingly, they lingered overlong in bed that morning, both fully intent on enjoying an unhurried continuation of the previous night's intimacy. They idled over breakfast in bed (their usual room service pancakes for her and toast and fruit for him), leisurely exchanged clues and their attendant answers to the Friday crossword as they made their way through a second pot of postprandial tea before padding off to indulge in an extremely steamy shared shower under the hotel's spa-like spray.

Then they dressed without rush in preparation for another quiet day spent as the Germans suggested _fahren ins Blaue,_ heading outdoors with no set purpose in mind.

Or so Sara thought.

Hence her surprise when the taxi they'd taken turned right on Mason instead of continuing straight on O'Farrell Street. When they'd turned east onto Turk, Sara decided she had to say something.

"Gil," she leaned in to whisper. "I, uh, know it's been a while since I last lived here, but the Ferry Building is the other way."

The Ferry Building, home to the city's largest farmers' market, had been their one absolute to do for the day.

"We're not headed to the Ferry Building. At least not yet. Have a stop to make first."

"What stop?"

His ever-patient expression plainly stated _Wait and see_.

"Fine," she sighed. "I trust you."

Which were pretty much the exact same words that had resulted in the two of them ending up completely naked, completely spent and completely content the night before.

xxxxxxx

Actually, all that had begun with the rasp of a zip, the rustle of fabric falling to the floor and the click of a belt buckle as they clumsily unwrapped each other between hungry kisses, both having finally given in to the night's long, lingering anticipation.

"Let me," Sara murmured against his lips when Grissom fumbled with the fasteners in her hair in attempt to free her captive curls, knowing as she did he knew nothing about the art of the up do and yet finding that rare ignorance as oddly endearing as ever.

The clasp undone, she shook loose her hair; let it fall free about her face; over his hands. Burying his nose in the messy ringlets, he inhaled the scent of her: all light and air and sea and stars, as if it were the breath of life itself.

Them both now nearly naked, he eased her back onto the bed before covering her body with his own.

Already eagerly anticipating his being inside her, Sara started with surprise when he murmured, "Not yet. Close your eyes," into the hollow of her neck.

However unsure why, she readily complied.

"Keep them closed," he insisted.

Which she did at least attempt to do, no matter how uncertain she was as to what might happen next. Only her eyes couldn't help but go wide when he captured a nipple in a kiss.

"You did that on purpose," she chided.

Of course he had, as a taunting sort of test.

Rising up onto his palms, he peered down at her and while perhaps only playing at disapproval, his expression tutted _What on earth am I going to do with you?_

At that moment Sara could think of quite a few things.

So once again she obediently shut her eyes and tried to clench them tight. But keeping them closed proved far more difficult than she could have possibly imagined, particularly at the feel of his mouth and breath and hands caressing her skin.

Sensing this approach was swiftly about to become a lost cause, Grissom paused to weigh his options.

"Hmm," he murmured, considering for a moment. "Ah," he said, finally alighting on a solution. "I've got just the thing."

That - and the sudden loss of the weight of him in the bed with her - caused Sara to prop herself up on her elbows, the better to stare after him.

" _Gil_?" came her half curious; half concerned query.

To which he made no reply, only soon returned with the tie he'd earlier been wearing happily in hand.

Sara snickered, "Since when are you into _Fifty Shades_?"

His face crinkled in confusion. "Fifty what?"

She had to laugh at this. Grissom was so seldom, if ever, completely clueless, it was so... _cute_ when he was.

She punctuated her fond "Never mind" with an equally affectionate kiss.

"Okay, I trust you," she said, drawing him back onto the bed with her again.

And she did: mind, body, heart and soul. In some ways, she always had.

Besides, it wasn't as if she could rightly refuse in any case. Not that she wanted to.

 _Close your eyes_ , she'd once told him several lifetimes now, back in that second studio of hers in Vegas, when he'd shown up frankly scared and seeking reassurance after Adam Trent had threatened her life.

That afternoon she had wanted him to experience what she was trying to tell him, knowing all too well that there were times when all the words in the world could offer no real reassurance. Instead, she'd thought, she'd hoped, he might begin to find peace, the way he so often had she knew, in following the evidence. That he could know she really was here and okay. That she loved him, even if it would be weeks and weeks yet before those actual words were spoken.

No, she would not deny him now.

Then something occurred to her.

"This doesn't involve insects, does it?"

She had to ask. You never really did know with Grissom.

"No, dear." It was his turn to chortle.

"Okay, _Gilbert_ ," she conceded, sinking into the sheets.

"Oh, and, dear -"

He proceeded to kiss each of her eyes closed before draping, not tying, the tie over them both.

"Yeah?" She barely breathed.

"Try to relax."

Sara had to choke back a chuckle, recalling all too well all the times she had told him as much.

Before she could offer up any further protests, he covered her mouth in a dizzying, literally breathtaking kiss.

What else could she do? She surrendered.

In the tie shrouded dark, her fingers found their way into his grizzled hair. She felt him turn his head to brush a kiss into her palm. Then he worked his way along each of her fingers, lingering in the webbing between them.

Next, his mouth gave the pulse point of her wrist a languid suck before he brushed his lips and beard along the sensitive inside of her arm.

He kissed his way along her collarbone; then from the nape of her neck to that space just beneath her ear, which when attended to like this, always left her especially breathless.

Sara moaned, her body arching instinctively into his. He kissed her quiet.

As he made his leisurely way down the long line of her neck, his lips following the way his eyes then hands first went, Sara suddenly realized why Grissom had been so adamant about her having her eyes closed. Without her vision to distract her, her other senses sharpened; each sensation heightened.

That and leaving her wondering where he might kiss or caress next, left her body humming in perpetual anticipation; both tease and please all at once.

There was of course, too, the occasional giggle at the inadvertent tickle.

From the way his lips would linger, his fingers dance, his palms rest as if to absorb all of her in, she wasn't the only one relishing the attention. He took his time, patient as he ever was, as if himself lost in the sheer sensation of her as he took nearly ever inch of her in.

And while freckles might scientifically speaking only be but random clumps of melanin, more than once Grissom had spoken with much longing of wanting to find and kiss each and every one of hers. If that was his intent tonight, he was, unsurprisingly, doing a far more than thorough job.

Apparently, he couldn't get enough of her; Sara certainly couldn't get enough of him.

"Breathe, dear," he sighed against her skin.

That, too, proved far more easier said than done, as she luxuriated in the heat and brush, the tickle and trace, the kiss and caress, the nip and suck, as hands and mouth took all of her in.

His actions spoke volumes, even if his words were scarce. He had, Sara realized, taken her oft repeated advice upon such an occasion when there proved so much his heart wanted to convey, and yet he still didn't know what to say: he showed her.

It wasn't just the touch of skin on skin she felt, the two of them like this. Not merely his rapt appreciation, his desire, but his tenderness, too, his happiness, even his ever-present curiosity.

He loved her. She loved him. Life in that moment really was that simple.

His lavishing attention everywhere served to titillate, torment, relax and energize her all at once. Intent as he was on driving her well past distraction and far into delight, he found himself richly rewarded with the deep throaty moan of his name murmured again and again and again as he worshipped every freckle, every crevasse and expanse.

He lingered his way along her long legs, easing the silk of her stockings aside, trailing his lips along the newly exposed skin as he went.

Upon reaching her ankle, he murmured "Someday"into the ink of her tattoo, intentionally echoing her perennial response to his request for the story behind it.

At the tickle and the topic, Sara laughed her own "Someday" in reply.

Each smiled content at the knowing there would be plenty of time for such somedays now.

Sara sighed at the way his thumbs massaged the stiffness from her instep. Even on a good day, her ever conservative heels had the habit of leaving her more than a little footsore. After their long walk along the shoreline, his ministrations felt like heaven. Sara practically purred with the pleasure of it.

Next, he ran his palms along the inside of her thighs, easing her legs apart. Then came the graze of his neatly cropped goatee, his hot breath, and a near limitless series of openmouthed kisses.

The end result being that by the time he reached the wet warmth between her legs, Sara thought she would burst. When his mouth descended on her there, she nearly did. Pleasure radiated through every fiber of her being.

" _Gil-_ " she gasped so loud she had to clamp a hand over her own mouth, alarmed at the volume of her cry, unused as she was after their last few months alone together in the midst of that great expanse of sea and sky to having to even think about keeping her enthusiasm in check.

They both laughed until her breath caught again at the return of his mouth against her.

His hands found hers; their fingers intertwined as his tongue took her in. How he loved the feel of her warm and wet like this, savored that taste that was hers and hers alone: slightly sweet like the playful tuff of cotton candy presented with their plate of _petite friandises_ at the end of that night's dinner. He thrilled at each hitch of breath, every rumble of a moan; relished her abandon and utter loss of control.

Her body tensed into toe-tightened breathlessness; her grasp held fast, she writhed atop the sheets. It didn't matter if she dislodged the tie or not now, not as overcome as she was. Overcome and lost, beyond lost - and found - all at once, there existed nothing but him and her.

She shuddered against him once, then soon a second time. And yet, he didn't stop. If anything, he sucked harder; flicked faster.

Sensing she was close, so very, very close again, he buried himself inside her.

When her pleasure at this began to wash over him, it took every ounce of self-control he possessed not to join her then and there. He wasn't ready to relinquish yet.

He gave her a moment to catch her breath, needing one himself.

The tie now haphazardly discarded, her brown eyes met his blue, hers both bright and dark all at once; her smile warm and content and yet still wanting.

Her hands slid over his shoulders, her short cropped nails down his spine, then further. Sara drew him deeper into her even as she angled her body into his.

He moaned into her mouth as he gathered her close.

Soon they settled into that easy, knowing rhythm, that slow, sweet sway of longtime lovers.

It was her near breathless "I love you" that ultimately undid him completely.

With his own sigh of "Sara," he let go and felt her do the same.

For a long while, they simply stared at each other, still drinking the other in.

Grissom smoothed her now unruly curls; planted a kiss into her hair.

Once he had both caught his breath and his heart finally found its way into words, he replied intent as ever, "Always."

Sara shared his smile, stroked his cheek with a thumb in that long held gesture of intimacy between them.

Loathe to so soon forgo the nearness, yet all too aware of how heavy his body must be against her, Grissom gently eased himself beside her in the bed.

Together, they slid between the sheets. Sara settled her head against his chest, feeling as warm, safe and satisfied as she only ever had with him.

A little sleepy, too, if truth be told.

The two spoke little. Neither needed to.

Quietly, they kissed and touched and grinned at each other until far sooner than either were quite ready for the night to end, they both slipped off to sleep.

xxxxxxx

Back in the taxi on their way to only Grissom and the driver knew where, Sara sensed Grissom's eyes on her.

"What?" she laughed.

"You..." he replied.

"Me what?"

"You asked me earlier what had gotten into me. You never gave me the chance to answer.

" _You_."

Sara flushed with pleasure at the unexpected compliment.

With a fond smile of his own, Grissom rested his hand on hers as they rode; his own thumb not so absently caressed the space where her wedding ring had once resided.

xxxxxxx

Needless to say, Sara was stunned when they pulled up just outside San Francisco City Hall.

"Do I want to know how you know where City Hall is?" she asked as he helped her out of the taxi.

"You're thinking of the Civil Center Courthouse, dear."

And his look indicated a further _Probably not_.

Sara, however, was not to be deterred.

"More importantly," she began, "what are we doing here?"

Wordlessly, Grissom tugged her towards the entrance.

Once inside and beneath the vast domed rotunda, he replied, "According to the Internet, we want room 168."

"For?"

"The County Clerk's office."

She would have echoed her recently uttered _for_ , only Sara realized she already knew why one went to the County Clerk's office. Apart from finding business, tax, birth, death, adoption, marriage and divorce records there, it was where one went to apply for a marriage license.

Sara's eyes and mouth went wide. It proved her turn to be the one rendered speechless.

Although after their conversation the night before, perhaps she shouldn't have been so surprised.


	18. Eighteen: I Left My Heart in San Francis

**Eighteen: I Left My Heart in San Francisco**

"Well, we finally did it," Sara sighed content. "Dinner in San Francisco after all these years."

After all, it wasn't every day you finally got to make good on something you should have done decades before.

She felt, rather than heard, Grissom pad up to join her. In all their years together, Sara never had managed to work out how he managed to do it: just appear as if out of nowhere.

Her lips tugged into a fond smile as his hand settled in the space between her shoulder blades, his touch cool from their long walk back from the restaurant and yet warm all the same. While she shivered at the caress of his thumb along the skin the daring drape of her brilliant blue dress revealed, it wasn't from cold.

Through the great expanse of glass, the city gleamed about them. Though it was the water Sara searched for, the comforting sight of sea and sky, what had become over the last few months home, at least as long as Gil Grissom was there beside her. But then anywhere always had been with him.

It had proved well worth the wait, that night, she thought as she recalled the evening's rather uneventful events: dinner at the noted Slanted Door restaurant with a window side table overlooking the Bay and its attendant Bay Bridge, the often-fiery Vietnamese fare frequently matching the warmth of their mood.

The food certainly didn't disappoint: shared starters of spicy ahi tuna tartare as well as bowls of Dungeness crab and asparagus soup. Sara ordered the roasted whole branzino in Thai chili sauce; Grissom, the seared dayboat scallops, but they ate off each other's plates as they so often did and split sides of baby bok choy and spicy broccoli. Both indulged in Hong Kong milk tea generously doused with sweetened condensed milk, just the way Sara had learned to savor it in Costa Rica.

Over the food, the two of them laughed, talked and even flirted. Spending nearly every waking moment of every day as they had since the end of September, one would think they would have little new to say to each other.

Quite the opposite proved true. They reminisced about the conference where they had first met, discussed the Mendelsohn case she'd been called in early on, the one he had offered to tag along on with. Old times. Good times.

Fingers frequently brushed as the two of them held each other with their eyes across the table. The famous view mostly went unnoticed, as wrapped up in each other as they were.

Well-sated, they opted for a walk along the bay before heading back to their hotel. As much time as they spent these days at sea, long walks were a luxury not to be passed up lightly. With Hank already left in the capable hands of a hotel-recommended sitter for the evening, there was no need to rush back. Besides, the night was too nice and neither of them were in a hurry for it to come to an end so soon.

So they strolled, her arm threaded through his, the two of them snuggled close, much like they frequently did these days when out together. Gallantly, Grissom had insisted on surrendering up his suit coat, draping it over Sara's near bare shoulders. For while her wrap had been pretty and functional enough to go from taxi to dinner, it did little to keep the November coastal chill away. The jacket also had the added benefit enveloping her in the warm, clean scent of him, something Sara particularly took pleasure in.

Pausing to linger at an especially picturesque spot, the two of them peered out into the vast infinity of ocean.

Sara sighed, "Somehow I never really do tire of the view."

She certainly hadn't tired of the company. She had the distinct feeling she never would.

Grissom had to agree. Though it was more the woman he was intent on taking in than the vista before them. With her hair honeyed again like it had been after all her time in the rainforest and her features far more freckled with all their time out in the sun, Sara really was even more beautiful than the day they had first met.

God was it good to be able to look - and as long as he liked - again.

Back at their hotel, Sara turned to face her ex-husband, though in the life they'd shared together over these past weeks, Gil Grissom no longer matched the moniker.

For his part, when not forgetting himself in French, Grissom introduced Sara as his partner - and she was - they were - certainly that these days, in every sense of the word.

He'd returned she noticed from hanging up his suit jacket and her shawl, having undone the buttons at his wrists and rolled the sleeves up to his elbows, revealing the deep tan beneath. He had yet to loosen his tie, though that would soon be next she knew.

He hated wearing ties as much as she hated wearing heels, yet that night each had readily worn them for the other. Only Sara had barely made it through the door before she'd slipped off her shoes, beyond relieved to finally be relieved of them.

Giving him the smile he knew she saved just for him, she said, finally speaking what she'd been thinking aloud, "Definitely worth it."

At his inquiring look she added, "Tonight."

Her unspoken _You were worth it_ proved plainly evident in her grateful gaze.

"Though I am hoping we won't have to wait quite so long next time," she admitted.

An eyebrow went up at her _next time_.

Then Grissom nodded, glad, beyond glad, that there could be, would be, next times a plenty. Though sad, too, knowing all too well as he did that if it had all been left up to him, tonight probably would have taken even longer, if it had even ever come about at all.

But Sara wouldn't let him stew in his own rue for long.

With little ceremony, she tugged his necktie free. She didn't miss his visible relief, nor the way his bright eyes darkened when she slid first one, then a second button at the neck of his cobalt colored oxford free.

"Better?" she asked with a smirk as she fingered a third playfully.

He merely shrugged.

"Although I doubt," he said, his hand slipping along her bare arm, "you would have invited me back to your place that night."

Sara chuckled. "Probably not. I've never been into one-night stands.

"That one incident with the mile high club notwithstanding," she reluctantly conceded.

"But," she began, "if dinner had gone that night anything like tonight, I probably would have been tempted to kiss you goodnight."

His eyes went _Oh really_ wide.

"Kiss how?" he eventually asked.

Sara considered this and him for a moment before leaning in. The resultant kiss proved soft, a little curious, barely lingering and yet of the sort that hinted of the possibility of more.

"I see..." he said.

"And probably would have scared you off," Sara surmised.

Grissom didn't see the need to deny this, sadly cognizant as he was that he hadn't been ready then. Hadn't been for a long while yet. Too long.

Falling in love with one Sara Sidle had been simple. Being in love with her, not any harder. It had been loving her he'd had (too often the hard way) to learn.

"But," Sara insisted with a soft smile, "we're here now."

"Yeah," he nodded. "Yeah."

Himself fingering one of her frock's no more than a thumb width wide strap, he murmured, "You never did tell me about the dress."

To which Sara flashed him one of those coy _Why this old thing?_ looks.

Though the way he was currently regarding her with all the same sort of wide-eyed wonder he'd extended when she'd first stepped out of the bathroom earlier that evening, put a swift end to the teasing.

xxxxxxx

She hadn't noticed it at first, intent as she'd been on trying to slip on her shoes, that Grissom had stood there stock still and staring, utterly unable to breathe for far more than a moment at the sight of Sara.

That she'd opted for blue came as no surprise, but then the color had always suited her. Sara looked beautiful in blue. The not quite conservative dip of her neckline wasn't new either. Nor did the calf-length cut of silk prove out of the ordinary. It was how her dress bared her back to barely a handbreadth above her waist which had rendered him mute.

It was only her softly muttered curse as she struggled with her shoes that brought him back to himself. That particular occurrence wasn't all that unusual either. Grissom had found her engaged in very much the same way the very first night he had stopped by her apartment to pick her up for dinner.

Then as now, he'd known just what to do about it.

"Allow me," he insisted and knelt to slide the shoes over her soles.

Charmed, Sara let him.

Her lips twitched at the not so absent brush of his thumb along her tattoo.

She held out her hand to help him back up. However sweet the gesture, Sara knew it had to be murder on his knees.

Neither immediately let go. With her free hand, Sara nervously tucked a stray curl already having come undone from her hastily constructed up do back behind her ear. As they had returned late from their day out and about and with a reservation to make, there hadn't been near enough time for her to pin it up properly. Grissom didn't seem to mind. Having long missed those curls, he'd been pleased, beyond pleased, when Sara had stopped straightening her hair. While she claimed the damp ocean air wreaked havoc on any attempts to wrestle it into submission, part of him knew she left it wild like that because she knew he liked it that way.

She wore no jewelry that night, he noted. Not that she needed it. Her openly flirtatious smile was ornament enough.

When he made no comment on her choice of outfit, Sara coquettishly teased, "You don't like it? The dress I mean."

His naked admiration plainly indicated _like_ wasn't the word.

"Only," he began, not above a bit of amorous banter himself, "there is no way you would have worn that dress back then."

That he had chosen to punctuate his observation by running a palm along her bare back, made Sara shiver.

Still, her tone was even when she uttered a nonchalant, noncommittal "Hmm"in reply, unwilling either to confirm or deny.

Instead, she gave him a lingering, thoroughly appreciative, once over. Grissom certainly looked sharp in a dark suit Sara couldn't recall ever having seen him wear before. That and the French blue oxford underneath always did bring out the brilliant blue of his eyes. While there was more salt than pepper in his hair and trim goatee these days, Sara never ceased to find it - and him - as sexy as hell.

Her appraisal done, she leaned in. With her breath hot against his ear she finally replied, "And you probably wouldn't have worn a suit and tie."

Having no reply to this, he turned, slid his lips along her cheek, before capturing her own in an entirely heady sort of kiss.

Caught off guard, she drew back breathless.

"We... We better go..." she stammered.

For if they didn't leave now, Sara knew they might not leave at all. And as pleasant as that possibility she knew would prove, Sara wanted this night for them, had wanted it ever since they'd first met in that lecture of his in this very same hotel far, far too many years ago.

Gathering up her wrap, Sara met him at the door.

Reaching up to brush a trace of lipstick from his mouth she teased, "You keep that up and the night will _definitely_ end differently."

xxxxxxx

"One of Sandra's?" Grissom asked, still fingering the narrow strap.

While the Vegas boutique owner had supplied quite a few of Sara's dressier outfits over the years, this one Sara had sought out herself. Besides, there hadn't exactly been a regular call for cocktail dresses on a fishing boat.

"Paris," she supplied.

"And here I thought you hated shopping."

Which Sara did, particularly when it came to clothes. But then they both already knew this.

"I'm surprised you were able to find time," Grissom added.

"We were a little busy," Sara readily agreed.

"It wasn't all bad."

"Apart from all the dead bodies. Yeah," she grinned.

"It is lovely. The dress," he said as his fingers descended along its neckline.

It was his turn to lean in.

His next words barely louder than breath, he breathed, "Though not nearly as lovely as what's underneath."

Sara blushed. Though why she couldn't say. It was why she had bought the dress in the first place: to both please and tease him. However could she protest when it apparently did exactly that?

The night had been like that: the long, low ever-present hum of desire flowing freely between them both.

When his other hand slowly slid down her spine, coming to rest at the small of her back, she thought the rasp of the zip was sure to come; the fall of fabric to the floor.

Instead, he fumbled with something in his pocket before taking up her hand and tugging her close.

True, he knew what lay beneath the thin layer of silk which separated them. Only he wasn't quite ready to surrender. Not just yet.

Her heart pounded at his nearness. Sara was starting to feel more than a little weak at the knees.

"Dance with me," Grissom murmured against her lips.

Sara blinked, this certainly not what she had expected.

"There's... There's no music," was all she could manage to stammer in reply.

Then she heard it, faint but slow and sweet and tender, coming from his recently acquired iPhone tucked in his front pants pocket.

"Don't even bother to protest that you don't know how," Grissom insisted. "We both know that's not true."

Although it had been years since they had last danced together. The first time having been back in the living room of his old Vegas townhouse on their first official "date."

He'd surprised her then, too, by asking her to dance. That he'd actually known how to had impressed her even more.

Perhaps she should have realized that night that as the act provided a relatively innocent excuse to get closer, it allowed, too, for the gradual deepening of physical intimacy between them.

Grissom certainly didn't need the excuse tonight. After all, they had barely made it out of their suite earlier that evening. No seduction was necessary. Sara wanted him as much as he wanted her.

Yet, he insisted.

"Dance with me," he said again.

Sara nodded; narrowed what little distance remained between them. They curled close, her head on his shoulder. Their joined hands clasped over his heart, he buried his nose in her hair. They kept close, closer than they had that first night, settling more into a gentle sway in time with the melody than into any readily recognizable steps, which suited them both fine.

Ultimately, it was the closeness which counted.

The music drifted over them both:

 _Take my hand, take my whole life too._

 _For I can't help falling in love with you._

"I never could you know," he quietly confessed.

No, he never could. He'd tried. Oh, how he'd tried. And failed.

Never else had failure ever felt so sweet.

Sara smiled into his shoulder. "Me either," she agreed.

Holding her tight, Grissom recalled what his heart had so desperately wanted to say, what he would have said if they hadn't been called in to work that first night: _Stay. Stay always._

The words proved no less true now.

If anything, even more.

He thought back to what the redoubtable, yet amiable _Commissaire_ Alain Rousseau had said to him only the month before in Paris.

Typically, such a high-ranking member of the _Officiers de la Police Judiciaire_ didn't take an active, hands-onrole in the cases they supervised. Grissom had the sneaky suspicion one Sara Sidle might have been part of the reason.

Female criminalists were not as yet _de riguer_ in France as they were these days in the United States. Pretty, intelligent and accomplished ones proved even rarer.

Even as perpetually socially clueless as Gil Grissom could regularly be, he hadn't missed the Frenchman's open admiration. He certainly couldn't fault his taste.

For her part, Sara shrugged off Rousseau's attentions as the typical French _bon ami_ of the late middle age male variety.

Then one afternoon the _commissaire_ caught Grissom watching Sara through a window as she worked her way through a perimeter search in a serial killer's back garden.

"You are lucky, my friend," Rousseau observed. "Such a delightful, brilliant, beautiful, _charmante_ woman - You are perhaps too lucky."

 _Too true,_ Grissom thought.

If the last few years had taught him anything, no amount of work in the world, however intellectually stimulating, could ever make up for the simple pleasure of Sara Sidle's company.

At the end of the day, where he really wanted to be was anywhere with her.

He, of course, did not say as much to Rousseau. Nor had Rousseau apparently expected a reply.

"A woman like that," he was saying, his appreciation plain, "only _un fou_ would let her get away."

To which Grissom nodded. He had been a fool - a moron and a coward, too - his mother had been right about that - to ever let Sara Sidle slip away.

"A word of advice, M. Grissom, if I may -"

"Please -" And Grissom meant it.

"You should marry her. Sooner rather than later, _mon ami._ "

"I intend to."

" _Bon. Bon._ "

Holding her in his arms again, it was time Grissom knew to finally make good on what he'd been considering for quite some time now. Practically since the moment Sara Sidle had stepped onto the deck the _Ishmael_ and back into his life for good.

He loved her. Needed her. Wanted her for always. And for once he knew exactly what to do about it.

As the French said, " _Il n'y pas trente-six solutions."_ There are not thirty-six solutions, only one.

There remained just one last thing -

"Sara?"

Her languid _hmm_ buzzed against his skin.

"Speaking of Paris," he began, a slight quiver in his normally ever-steady voice.

"Uh huh," she replied, too comfortable and content to be able to manage anything more coherent at the moment.

"Did - Did you mean what you said that day with the bees?"

Astonished at the unexpected query, Sara drew back to peer into his face, only to find Grissom wearing a strange look as he chewed at his lower lip. It was almost as if he were nervous.

Only Gil Grissom didn't do nervous. Well, nearly never. Though admittedly perhaps he had done so more of late.

Still -

When her reply did not come quite quick enough, he stammered, "You... You don't remember?"

Of course she did.

How could she not?


	19. Nineteen: The Birds and the Bees

**Nineteen: The Birds and the Bees**

Sara wasn't likely to forget.

Everyone always rhapsodized about springtime in Paris, but Paris in autumn proved no less spectacular, all reds and golds and the rustle of leaves at one's feet as the late afternoon sun gilded the City of Lights aglow.

Sara, however, only had eyes for the beekeeper clad man intent on his work on the other side of the rooftop.

Who would have thought they kept bees atop the city's _célèbre_ Palais Garnier?

But they did. A phantom in the basement; bees on the roof, only in Paris.

Sara shook her head, far more out of fondness than rue. _That man and his bees_. Still, she supposed she wouldn't have him any other way.

"You do Saint Ambrose proud," she hailed him across the sea of bee boxes.

Although with that ever impish smile of his and his persistent unbridled enthusiasms, Sara thought him far more like Aristaeus, the Boeotian minor deity of the useful arts of husbandry and beekeeping or even puckish Pan, the Greek keeper of the bee hives of Arcadia of the Eighteenth Century Romantic tradition, than in any way saint like.

Grissom glanced up from a super perplexed, yet pleased to see her.

"M. Boutin suggested I might find you here," Sara offered by way of explanation.

Luckily, when she had returned earlier to _le laboratoire d'Entomologie du Musée National d'Histoire Naturelle_ to find Grissom already gone for the day, Sara had run into Grissom's former teaching assistant haunting the museums vast cabinets of specimens.

"You do realize, Gil, that it doesn't matter if it's the latest model or not, your phone will only work when you remember to turn it back on," Sara chided amiably, this being not all that uncommon _un faux pas_ of his, at least in Paris where phone etiquette proved far more restrictive than back in the U.S. Turns out the French were far less forgiving about having their face-to-face _conversations_ interrupted by jangling _téléphones portables_. Though despite this fact, Sara wasn't above teasing him about it.

Grissom chose to ignore the barb. "I'm nearly done. But you're welcome to suit up and join me," he suggested instead.

Sara hesitated. For while she wasn't apiphobic exactly, she definitely tended towards being cnidophobic. Once stung, twice shy.

But her momentary reticence proved only that, momentary. She happily accepted his invitation.

Grissom grinned. "Gear's in the shed," he called. "It's already unlocked."

Wandering over to the small side building, Sara took stock of the current state of her clothing. Her long sleeves and jeans would do well enough; there was no need for a full suit. Grissom certainly hadn't bothered. So she donned the veiled helmet and adjusted the drape of the mesh to make sure no part of her head and neck were exposed before tugging on the elbow-length pair of sting-resistant leather gloves.

Grissom was in the middle of removing the top off a second hive when she approached. Giving her a long lingering once over he said, "I really do love it when you dress up."

Sara smirked as she tried to contain her eye roll. "Cute, _Gilbert_.

"So what are you doing up here? It's a little late in the season for harvesting honey."

"They're getting ready to settle in for the winter. Just thought I'd check up on the state their stores as they'll have to last," he replied. "Thankfully, the harvesters left them plenty."

Once, back in Vegas, Grissom had explained how a hive required a minimum of sixty pound of honey to sustain itself through the winter. Otherwise the colony was at a serious risk for starvation. Some beekeepers even took to supplementing the bees' stores with fondant, candy boards or sugar solutions to insure their bees' survival.

"Harvest good this year?" Sara asked.

"Excellent or so I was told," he replied methodically checking the hive body below.

Strange as it sounded, at least it had to Sara, Paris was France's second largest producer of _le miel_ after the verdant Luberon region of Provence. But once she considered all the acres of pesticide and GMO-free gardens the city contained, she could easily see how it could be true.

"Busy bees," she laughed.

"'Go to the bee, thou poet: consider her ways and be wise,'" Grissom intoned. "George Bernard Shaw," he supplied by attribution.

When Sara didn't appear impressed, he offered, "You prefer Shakespeare?"

"Over Shaw? Usually."

"'For so work the honey-bees, Creatures that by a rule in nature teach the act of order to a peopled kingdom.' _Henry V_."

"One ruled by females, lest you forget," Sara reminded.

While the queen did little more than churn out a seemingly endless supply of eggs (1-2,000 a day in summer), the male drones did even less inside the hive apart from eat and loaf and wait to be kicked out to fertilize emerging virgin queens. The all female infertile worker bees however were busy doing everything else: caring for their helpless queen mother, running the nursery, actively maintaining a constant hive temperature (90-95 degrees Fahrenheit winter, spring, summer and fall), keeping up with an assortment of various housekeeping duties (including serving as undertakers). Those inside processed and packed the hive's supply of the honey for long-term storage, while others flew miles upon miles in search of nectar and pollen. The aged workers left behind to guard and protect the hive frequently did so with their very often short lived lives.

And yet, as a species the honeybee still had time to develop their own language (waggle dance and all), work out how to engineer mathematically sophisticated living spaces with biologically based climate control as well as to operate a highly functional democracy, something humans for all their advancements had yet to master.

Busy bees, indeed.

Of course Grissom hadn't forgotten. "The world's original Amazons," he proudly opined.

And not without reason. Aptly named _Apis mellifera_ or "carrier of honey," a single honey bee regularly carted 100 mg of nectar in her honey stomach as well as two packets of pollen on her hind legs, all totaling more than twice her own body weight.

That she could forage that much in twenty minutes or less, visiting 50 to 100 flowers at a time in the process and do so multiple times a day, made the fact even more impressive.

After all, if they were human sized, that lone worker bee would end up traveling the equivalent of going from Paris to Milan in thirty minutes. Even jet airplanes took an hour and half.

And all to each produce only 1/12 of teaspoon of honey during her entire lifetime.

"And run completely on flower power," Sara added. "Not bad for the vegans of the insect world."

As strictly nectar drinkers and pollen eaters, honeybees, pimps for plants as they and other pollinators might be, were particularly fastidious in their feeding habits. Butterflies for all their frippery on the other hand frequently favored the far more macabre: corpses, rotting fruit, urine, feces. A fact Grissom hadn't neglected to inform a far more lepidopteran loving Sara of on multiple occasions.

He motioned for her to give the nearby smoker a few hearty puffs as he continued to work.

Preferring her bees as docile as possible, Sara was all too happy to comply.

As he checked the sheet beneath the screen-bottomed board, Sara asked, "Any sign of mite infestation?"

Mites she knew were bees' (and many other insects for that matter) worst enemy, not only known to transmit disease, particularly during the close confines of winter, but also as they actively preyed on the developing larvae inside.

"Nope, clean as a whistle and nice and dry."

Damp could lead to choking mold and fungus. It wasn't easy being a bee.

"CCD?"

"Just healthy happy hives," Grissom concluded with all the well-warranted pride of a man who had himself help grow the historic opera house's impressive collection of honeybees.

"You sound relieved."

To which Grissom replied in a far too fluent sounding Italian, "' _Il miele non si fa senza le pecchie_.' You can't make honey without bees.'"

 _Show off,_ Sara mouthed; Grissom only grinned.

"We're good," he said, securing the last of the bee boxes. He gave the grouping one last lingering look before steering Sara back to the storage shed to change.

Peering out over the Paris skyline, Sara said, "You hear that scientists have trained honeybees to tell a Picasso from a Monet? Would come in handy at the Louvre.

"Not bad for creature with a brain smaller than a grain of rice."

Grissom wasn't exactly surprised. Not when bees could tell time, were master mathematicians and architects, as well as excellent bloodhounds.

When it came to all the wonders of bees, noted entomologist Karl von Frisch certainly had it right when he had claimed: "The life of the bee is like a magic well, the more you draw from it, the more there is to draw."

"I have to admit when you're right, you're right. Bees are pretty cool," Sara conceded. "Apart from the whole stinging you part."

Grissom held out his hand for her recently removed gloves and hat to replace them and his own on the hooks inside.

"It hurts her far more than it hurts you," he reminded her.

After all, stung done, the honeybee didn't live to sting another day.

"I suppose the honey does make up for it."

"You do realize that technically honey is just dehydrated repeatedly regurgitated bee vomit, right, dear?" Grissom offered.

She did.

Foragers collected the nectar into their honey crops to bring back to the hive. Once back home, the trophallactic exchange occurred by which they then offered up their finds to their waiting younger sisters whose jobs it was to fan away the moisture until the 80% water content of nectar became the 20% of honey.

"And I'm going to pretend you didn't just tell me that. _Again_."

"Ignorance is bliss?"

"With you - frequently," she laughed.

"So," he said, closing the cabinet and clicking the lock back into place, "you're sticking to Aristotle's version: honey as 'dew distilled from stars and the rainbow?'"

Sara nodded. "Works for me."

While Grissom never did roll his eyes, he did shake his head and sigh.

Noticing the unruly tuft of hair left behind when he had removed his helmet, Sara reached out to smooth it back into place.

She really did love that man - bugs and all.

With much fondness, she recalled that day nearly eight years before and ocean and more than half a continent away with the two of them suited up amongst his rescued bees during what had been one of those rare bright days in a very dark season.

So much had happened since then and yet -

"The answer would still be yes."

The words were out of her mouth before she'd even realized she'd thought them, let alone said them aloud.

Despite the hurt of the last few years, Sara wouldn't undo it.

True, there had been anger and grief, but joy, too, and love and hope and a home she really had never known before. The heartache had only proven great because she'd known all too well what she had lost.

Having found it - and him - again Sara knew she wanted this: a life like this with Gil Grissom.

After all, it had been the divorce and not the marriage that had been the mistake.

Though she did have to rather ruefully admit, "Might do a few things differently. Okay, a _lot_ of things differently."

His voice went curiously quiet as Grissom asked, "And now?"

"Are you asking?" Sara asked with a laugh. "Though now that I think about it, I don't remember there ever being an actual question that day."

With an ever-patient look that clearly indicated yes he was, Grissom simply, though admittedly a bit nervously, waited for her to reply.

Only Sara wasn't about to let him off that easy.

"Then ask, Gil," she insisted.

Without pause, preamble or pretension, he said, "Marry me."

While still not technically a question, Sara answered it as one: "Yes."

Taking his face into her hands, her thumbs caressed their old familiar route.

"Yes," she beamed.

She brushed her third _yes_ against his lips.

And this time, the two of them shared a kiss even sweeter than the honey in the hives behind them.

xxxxxxx

Back in their San Francisco hotel room, Sara hurried to reassure Grissom.

"Of course I do. Of course I did."

They just hadn't really had all that much of a chance to discuss the practicalities. They'd barely been back stateside before they'd been off motoring to San Francisco and the Farallones for shark season.

Animal Planet might have _Shark Week_ , but out there on the Pacific it was more like shark month and a half. The great whites had certainly kept them and the rest of the team busy enough with all the satellite tagging, tracking and population survey work.

Far from fearsome, the whites had proved truly awesome beasts. Sara would have gladly stayed on for the rest of the study period, but then the Freeman case summons had come and Sara knew, like it or not, she had to go. Admittedly returning to Vegas with Grissom back beside her had rendered the prospect far more pleasant.

But as for setting an actual date, there really hadn't been the time or the occasion. Besides, Sara figured they had plenty of time, a whole lifetime's worth really, and in any case, it was just far too good sharing a life together again for her to worry about much else.

Sara offered up a query of her own, "Why do you ask?"

In trademark Gil Grissom fashion he made no reply. He only grinned that enigmatic grin of his and proceeded to keep his own council, which only left Sara more curious rather than less and to which she might have pressed if he hadn't chosen that moment to trace his lips along the inside of her neck.

Not that Sara hadn't been cryptic of late herself.

She'd certainly played coy when as they'd entered their hotel suite for the first time several days before, she'd made a point of telling him "Don't make any plans for Thursday night."

At his inquiring look, she said, "There's something I want to do before we head back to Vegas."

"What's that?" Grissom asked.

"What I should have done nearly eighteen years ago: I'm asking you to dinner. _Finally_."

"Are you asking?" he said, the pleased, yet playful, lilt of a tease in his tone.

Sara had to purse her lips to conceal her grin. "Have dinner with me."

"Yes," was all he said by way of reply, though his smile was nearly as broad as she had ever seen it when he said it.

"Although," Sara added, the twinkle of her own tease - or perhaps promise - in her eyes, "I have the feeling the evening might end a bit differently. A lot differently," she hurriedly amended.

If he needed any further clue, she leaned in to turn the light brush of a kiss into one of the more breathtaking variety.

That Thursday night, dinner come and gone and the two returned to their room, they danced together long after the music was done.

They proved Sara right in one thing:

The evening ended very differently indeed.

xxxxxxx

Before San Francisco City Hall's grand, sweeping marble staircase, the two of them stood stock still and Sara still staring.

Mistaking her silence for disapproval, Grissom stammered, "I... I just thought... after last night..."

The night before certainly made a lot more sense now.

At first, Sara had thought his deliberate, languorous lovemaking had arisen from the rightness of their finally having that dinner together.

But she'd missed something amongst all that overwhelming rush of pleasure: his joy.

Grissom hadn't been thinking of the past, or even the present. It had been the future he'd been celebrating. _Their_ future.

He really had taken her oft-repeated advice on what to do when the words just wouldn't come and showed her what that future meant to him. Grissom had poured all his love, his hope, his happiness into every kiss and caress in his own wordless, yet no less passionate, confession.

Sara nearly wept at the realization.

Their life together may have never been perfect, frequently far, far from it, fraught with mistakes, misreadings, misunderstanding and too too many good intentions as it was. And yet, somehow they loved each other all the same, perhaps more than if it had gone _happily ever after_ from the start.

He wanted her, wanted her as his partner - companion - lover - best friend - and wife, not just for the moment, however sweet those moments might prove, but just as he'd taken to replying to her telling him she loved him, for always.

Sara had been foolish not to have realized it before. Certainly she had been more than a little preoccupied the night previous. A lot more.

Still, she should have seen where his asking had been heading. Less than two months off the job and so much for her ability to follow the evidence.

"We - We don't - If you don't -" Grissom continued to fill her silence with his uncharacteristic stammering.

 _Why not?_ Sara thought. _Wait for what after all?_ They loved each other. Were already in the midst of building a new life together. Why not make it legal, too?

Despite all the ribbing she'd received from her coworkers, Sara had rather liked the whole being married thing in ways she hadn't thought to expect. She certainly hadn't expected it to make that much of a difference between her and Grissom, but a difference it had.

Yes, being married had been nice, more than nice, when they had managed to be in the same place at the same time.

The being together had in fact, come strangely easy to two people who had lived nearly all their adult lives on their own. The constant miles (physical and emotional) apart not so much. That had been the problem; what had ultimately undone them.

As for today, the trip to City Hall only seemed spontaneous. Sara had the feeling Grissom had been contemplating this visit for some time now.

More than mere contemplating, he'd been planning on it. That fact touched her to no end.

But then Gil Grissom always was full of surprises.

Still a bit awestruck, she said, "You - You've been planning this -"

His slight twitch of a grin was all the yes Sara needed.

Grissom had. Admittedly, he'd had to speed things up after Sara's subpoena arrived. Turned out better this way. Or so he figured.

"Gil, you do know that surprise elopements aren't supposed to come as a surprise to bride?" Sara said with an uneasy smile of her own, after yet another lengthy silence.

Misreading her nervous ribbing, Grissom's face grew grave, intent.

"Honey - We - We don't have to -"

"No, no." Sara swiftly cut him off. "I mean yes. That's... That's not what..."

Now she was the one stammering.

"It's okay," he assured her, although his disappointment proved plain.

"I - I don't - I'm not exactly dressed," she protested.

The sweater and jeans topped off by a jacket look might be perfect for a day of sightseeing in the City by the Bay, but it certainly wasn't an outfit she imagined getting married in. Plus, her hair she knew had to be a mess. Still damp from their shower all she'd done before they'd headed out the door was tug it back into a hurried ponytail.

"You're lovely as always, my dear."

And she was, standing there fresh faced and bright eyed.

Ultimately it didn't matter what she wore, that daring dress of the night before or those horrid lab issued coveralls, she was Sara, his Sara, and beautiful as always.

Said Sara colored at the unsought for compliment.

"Flatterer," she laughed.

"The truth is never flattery," he countered evenly.

Sara held out her empty hands. "We don't have any rings."

Grissom visibly brightened at this. "Actually, we do."

He carefully withdrew a neatly folded handkerchief from his pants pocket before peeling back the corners to reveal two very familiar gold bands.

"How did you -" Sara couldn't stop herself from asking.

"You... You left it behind," he said by way of unnecessary explanation, for Sara knew all too well where she had last left her wedding ring - along with her house keys on the kitchen counter of what had been their Vegas place. That day she thought never to see it - or him really - ever again.

"You got them then, both of them..."

She hadn't had the heart to keep his grandmother's ring either, the one he'd given her to celebrate their engagement, but which had been far too valuable to wear at work.

"Mom returned them to me. Said they were there when she went by to help pack up the place after you..."

Sara nodded a little sadly.

Then she noticed the smaller of the two bands now bore the scrawl of an inscription inside. She reached out a tentative hand.

"When we were in Paris I... I took the liberty of having it engraved.

"Just in case," he said as she held the glint of gold up to the light.

 _To Sara From Grissom_

Sara supposed most people would have regarded his choice of words as inelegant and not the least bit romantic, but recognizing as she did the same sentiment from the time he had first sent her that plant all those years ago, she knew those four words contained all the ones he wished he could say, but didn't always possess the words to. That he hadn't had the words, even now, moved rather than chagrined her.

At this, the last hint of any further protest of being unprepared died on her lips.

A dress didn't matter. Nor did flowers or finery or fuss. Those things weren't what turned a wedding into a marriage. The couple did that. And ultimately, they each knew it was the marriage and not the wedding which mattered most.

He wanted this. She wanted it, too.

There was, Sara only just noted, one problem.

Off to the side at the base of the stairs, a neatly stanchioned sign politely proclaimed its apologies that there were no appointments for marriage ceremonies left for that day.

Sara found its presence profoundly disappointing despite the fact she hadn't woken up that day intending to get married.

Grissom, however, shrugged this too away with such an insouciant "I know a guy" Sara had to laugh.

"You know a guy? Why am I not surprised? Another of your bug buddies?"

"Boatman," he corrected. "I helped get him out of a jam. He owes me one - or two.

"When the charter fishing business began to lag, he started taking couples out to sea. Sunset weddings, that sort of thing."

"You going to give him a call - see if he's free?"

Grissom shook his head. "It's off season. Not too many people wanting to head out on the water this time of year.

"Besides, he's already expecting us."

"Really?" Again Sara had to laugh. "You were that certain I'd say yes?"

"No," he replied his tone turning tender, "just hoping."

Sara couldn't help but grin at this. Grissom, however, had gone grave again.

"I... I mean it. Sara, _honey_ , we don't - if you don't -"

Taking his face up in her hands, Sara peered into his agitated eyes, wanting to ensure there was no possible way for him to misconstrue what she was about to say.

"I want to."

Then not caring who in the busy government building saw, she kissed him into comprehension right then and there.

"I do. I really do," she murmured against his lips.

To which Grissom returned her kiss and more.

About them no one paid them any particular heed, passionate expressions as yet being fairly commonplace beneath that particular Beaux-arts dome.

xxxxxxx

Sara didn't tell Greg any of this, however.

That didn't keep him from shaking his head and saying with a sigh, "Who would have thought - the both of you helpless romantics."

Considering that perhaps in some ways they were, Sara made no move to disagree.

"Only court's a real romantic honeymoon," Greg intoned rather heavy on the sarcasm.

While he certainly didn't begrudge Sara her hard found happiness, that didn't mean he was above giving her a hard time about it.

"It wasn't exactly planned," Sara reluctantly admitted.

"That doesn't sound like you. Either of you."

Greg figured between the two of them, they planned everything and he meant _everything_.

True, too, Vegas hadn't been the honeymoon she would have planned. Grissom either, she knew, if he had gotten the chance. But neither of them had been all that upset about having to put anything they might rather do on hold. They were together, that was what mattered most.

Besides, the last few months had been as much a honeymoon of sorts as anything, certainly as sweet as the name suggested. Vegas was only for a few weeks. Once the trial was over they could return to California and resume what they had started back in San Francisco.

What were a few weeks anyway when they hand a whole lifetime together ahead of them to look forward to?

Or so Sara had thought before Hannah happened.

"It... It will be a week - a week today," Sara said with a weak smile, which was the most she could manage at the moment.

 _Had it only been a week?_

Despite the grueling heartbreak of the Freeman case, the week had been a wonderful one. Wonderful for all its everyday: the shared meals, shared walks, shared talks, shared bed, shared life again, extraordinary in all and for all of its ordinariness.

"When the trial wrapped up we were planning on heading out towards Monterey Bay.

"There's this huge Monarch tagging project each December near Pacific Grove. Every Monarch west of the Rockies turns up there.

"While it's nothing like the Michoacan Mountains near Mexico City, it's the largest aggregation of hibernating _Danaus plexippus_ this side of the border.

"The Goleta butterfly grove alone is home to 100,000 individuals from November until January. The trees there are literally carpeted in butterflies."

From his expression, Greg didn't seem to see how this could possibly be construed as any more romantic than three weeks spent in Sin City. But then perhaps to Grissom bugs really were romantic. That certainly wouldn't surprise him. Of course what Greg didn't know was the whole adventure had been Sara's idea, one to which Grissom had readily and eagerly agreed.

"Only you two would rather work during your honeymoon," snorted Greg. "But then this is you and Grissom. You've always been a little weird."

"'We're all a little weird, and life's a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.'

"Doctor Seuss," Sara finished by way of attribution.

Greg shook his head, in this, Sara had pretty much proven his point.

"It sounds nice," Greg conceded after a moment. "The butterflies. Better than cockroach racing."

Sara was forced to admit this was indeed true, even if Grissom had been quietly angling for a trip to Brisbane in the new year for the Thirty-Third Annual Cockroach Races.

"If we even get to go now," Sara said softly.

"You will," Greg firmly maintained. "It's... _maddening_ sometimes. You two. You may drift apart, but somehow you always find your way back to each other.

"You're... You're like those penguins with their pebbles."

"Gentoos?" Sara asked, trying to work out what on earth she and Grissom had to do with _Pygoscelis papua._

"Yeah, them. You travel all around the world, spend all these months apart and yet you still find your way home to each other."

However sweet the sentiment, Sara automatically corrected, "Gentoos are actually pretty sedentary and tend to stick together as a general rule.

"Plus, like most birds, they tend towards promiscuity, sexually speaking.

"Birds as a whole tend to be more socially monogamous than sexually faithful. They may pair up for life but -"

"They're getting some on the side?" Greg supplied.

"Frequently yes," Sara agreed. "There's even a term for it: extra-pair copulation.

The bird equivalent of philandering. Both sexes usually prove equally guilty."

" _Grissom_?" Greg asked, as if his former boss were both the source and the one to blame.

"I read," Sara countered.

"I would have thought you would have been far too busy with other things for that."

Sara opted not to dignify this with a response. Instead she said, "If you're looking for the ultimate in avian monogamy albatrosses are it.

"They actually do mate for life and stay true to their partners year after year, despite the fact that they rarely spend any time together.

"Even after they've selected a partner the pair will go off on their separate ways for weeks, months at a time to feed before returning to mate.

"They literally circumnavigate the globe and yet still manage to come home to each other."

Greg goggled at her. Sara was definitely channeling Grissom now.

Sara on the other hand was thinking how far albatrosses went for love: 10,000 miles in a single journey. Monarchs, she knew managed nearly 5,000. Leatherback turtles would go 7,400; grey whales 12,000. Great whites went even further: 12,400 miles. The arctic tern had them all beat, however, journeying from pole to pole and back again, more than 44,000 miles round trip.

Grissom had come 3,500 miles just to find her in Costa Rica all those years ago. Just two months before, Sara had covered the 350 miles from Las Vegas to San Diego. Not that Sara wouldn't have gone to the ends of the earth to find him if she'd had to. She'd go there now.

"They even cuddle, albatrosses," Sara was saying more absent than not. "One bird will lay its head on the chest of the other when they rest side by side."

Then apropos of nothing she asked, "Did you know Coleridge never saw a real living albatross despite it being the subject of one of his most famous poems?"

Greg couldn't resist. "You've definitely been spending way too much time with Grissom.

"Not that that's a bad thing," he hastily assured her.

He attempted to give Sara a reassuring smile of his own.

"Sara -"

"Yeah?" she rather absently asked.

"Grissom came with you to be with you. And he will be," asserted Greg.

He, himself, needing it to be true, he insisted, "He will be."


	20. Twenty: The Dying of the Light

**Twenty: The Dying of the Light**

His shivering had stopped.

How long ago, Gil Grissom hadn't the least clue, time feeling oddly out of joint in the omnipresent dark.

What he did know was that after all that involuntary shaking, the sudden stillness felt strange.

Not that he felt much of anything at the moment.

A distant part of him registered that this was not a good sign.

Nor was the fact that stiff with the cold as they were, he couldn't seem to manage to uncurl his fingers from their empty grasp.

Or perhaps that was the only way he knew now to hold fast to the life already slipping far too fast between them.

He was dying by degrees and knew it.

And there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it.

Any of it.

He was too weak and tired to struggle anymore in any case.

That and it came more and more frequently now: the crash awake, soon followed by the inevitable drift of dark. Simply keeping his eyes open involved a supreme act of will.

 _Tired._

 _So tired._

So tired of fighting what was all too quickly becoming a lost war.

He would go gentle. Rage had been as of little use as everything else.

Regret or no, ready or no, too soon it would be time. Even befuddled and beclouded as his mind might be, he knew this to be true.

So he surrendered and let all the science and the sentiment give way to Sara.

Unsurprising this really, as his thoughts somehow always found their way back to her - where they - and he - belonged.

To the woman who had long and yet not long enough been his wife, his best friend, partner, companion and lover in every sense of the word. The only person who had ever known him by heart and yet accepted him all the same - warts and bugs and awkwardness and all.

Sara who even with all the dark and cold and death about him remained as ever light and warmth and life.

But then she always had.

She, who with that smile of hers could light up an entire room, had made every day extraordinary.

How he'd loved sharing his life with her and having her share hers with him.

"Judge a moth by the beauty of its candle," Rumi had once advised. And Sara Sidle proved the most beauteous of candles, the brightest of lights that had burned deep into the ever-present blackness of his life. What that made of him by reflection he couldn't say. Only that not only had she managed to restore his faith in the human being, she had equally restored his faith in himself.

Yes, with her there had been light and life and warmth and home. And peace to all his broken pieces.

With her beside him he found he no longer had to journey alone through that valley of the shadow of death. Both ever and now.

No wonder he held fast to the thought and hope of her; carried her close.

Memory was a gift -

Or so he'd frequently maintained.

Those of her doubly so. What was left of his meandering mind clung to them, treasured them as the pearls beyond price they really were.

He found them oddly warming, too.

As an unexpected heat spread through him, flooded through his frozen limbs, it brought with it a quiet comforting sort of calm he'd only ever known with her.

What his rational mind would have told him - if it was still functional enough - was that abrupt rush and flush was nothing more than that last blush of life before the cold irrevocably settled in. Just the muscles slowing the flow of blood finally weakened into relaxation.

Just the body letting go.

Yet his heart held on to her.

While his eyes drifted shut as the warmth radiated through him, his cracked, parched lips twitched into the ghost of a grin.

 _Sara -_

Perhaps he said the syllables aloud, perhaps he only thought them. They proved sweet all the same.

 _Sara -_

No, he did not even have to open his eyes.

He didn't need them to see her anyway.

Already, he could see her as vividly as if she were here with him.

Thyself away, art present still with me;

For thou not farther than my thoughts canst move,

and I am still with them, and they with thee...

Yes, that was it. And never proved the words more true.

She was here. He could feel her here. Sara, his Sara, here, warm and snug against him, as near as his own breath and as close as his own skin.

There was nothing in the world like that feeling, the comfort and joy of it, the sheer serenity.

It didn't matter that his brain knew this to be impossible. His heart and soul told him otherwise and his intellect was far, far too far-gone to insist.

Thus her warmth spread through every inch of him and he was warm again, warm like that their first morning aboard the _Ishmael_ together.

 _Dreaming._ That had been his first thought that morning.

He must still be dreaming. He had to be dreaming.

Only the feel of Sara so real and alive in his arms again proved far better than any dream he'd ever allowed himself to even dare to dream over the last several years.

She was here. She was really here.

Beyond belief - beyond hope -

Sara - _his Sara_ -

Even if she hadn't been his Sara for far, far too long.

But she was here now, snuggled into his chest, fast asleep and slightly snoring.

He drew the sheets tighter about them both; grinned as she nestled nearer.

Smoothing her hair, he breathed her in, as yet trying - and failing - to wrap his head around what both his heart and body were telling him: Sara really was here.

And while much like the first time the two of them had ever slept together, he was tempted, sorely tempted, to kiss her awake, but knowing better that she needed more the rest, he closed his eyes and simply held her fast.

How could he have forgotten what it was like to hold her like this?

How could he have ever willingly given up this - and her?

For while Gil Grissom wasn't entirely sure what heaven might have in store, in that moment, that morning, he couldn't imagine it being any better than this.

Perhaps it hadn't been about the explorations of the heart to which T.S. Eliot had been alluding, but lying there with Sara back beside him, the poet's words rang even more true:

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Gil Grissom had journeyed the world. Seen much. Done much. Learned much. But in that blessed moment here with her, not the least of any of that mattered. What mattered was he was finally home.

And found himself fortunate to possess back in his arms again exactly what he'd been looking for out there: Sara.

Grissom didn't need to work out when or why or how he had fallen in love with one Sara Sidle, this he already knew, understood, even if he hadn't always known what to do about it.

Why on earth she had ever done and felt the same that was the real question.

And yet she had and did.

And, he, he knew, he would love her - imperfectly, incompetently, sometimes even cowardly - for the rest of his life. Beyond then, too, if religion were even halfway right about what came after.

Yes, he loved her. He didn't need to count the ways, however true. And yet, taking her in, holding her close, he felt:

 _I love thee to the depth and breadth and height_

 _My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight_

 _For the ends of Being and ideal Grace._

 _I love thee to the level of every day's_

 _Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight._

 _I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;_

 _I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise._

 _I love with a passion put to use_

 _In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith._

 _I love thee with a love I seemed to lose_

 _With my lost saints, - I love thee with the breath,_

 _Smiles, tears, of all my life!_

Overwhelmed and overcome by it all as Grissom was, while it may have been Elizabeth Barrett Browning's words playing inside his head, the ones that ultimately spilled past his lips and into Sara's unruly curls, while far simpler, proved no less heartfelt:

"I love you."

At this, as if his whispered words had found their way into her sleep, Sara stirred and sighed and snuggled deeper, though thankfully did not wake.

Grissom felt his heart half break with happiness.

How he longed for that morning now. Longed to wake with the warmth of her body in the bed beside him, equally yearned to fall asleep again in her arms, and in all the hours of in between to live in her smiles and her laugh.

Like that morning at the beach. Days and days ago now perhaps.

The two of them with Hank out on the deserted sands, laughing on their parts; playful barking on Hank's. But it was Sara, Sara whom he remembered most.

Sara standing in the surf - the sun streaming through her hair - that glint in her eyes - the bright beam of her smile - her so utterly breathtakingly alive as she held out her wedding band bedecked hand for him to join her.

He'd been sure his heart had stopped at the sight of her, struck still and dumb as he'd been. His breath certainly had.

All the while his heart and mind had been busy thinking: When they were old and grey and time begun to slip away, this, this was how he would remember her -

Her and it, ordinary and yet extraordinary, all the same. Just as so much of their lives together had proved.

He wanted to hold fast to that life - to her

And yet -

He was so tired. So horribly, terribly tired.

 _Honey -_

From somewhere - whether from the place where memories keep, or where dreams may come, or the shadow from which hallucinations are born - her voice came, quiet as a whisper, tender as a caress:

"It's okay, Gil..."

And Grissom slipped further, sank deeper into her welcoming warmth as the words she often spoke whenever worry kept him awake eased him into rest:

"Sleep. Sleep.

"I'll still be here when you wake."

After that, the rest was silence.


	21. Twenty-one: Mortui Vivis Praecipant

**Twenty-one:** _ **Mortui Vivis Praecipant,**_ **or Let the Dead Teach the Living**

Sara finally worked up the courage to ask Greg what she'd been wanting to ask him ever since he'd come in to join her on the locker room floor.

"You and Hodges get anything new from the van?"

"Nothing," said Greg. "Absolutely nothing."

Sadly, Sara wasn't surprised.

Greg however shook his head. "I don't get it. Why leave any of it behind? It's like ants."

"Ants?" Sara echoed. Bugs weren't exactly Greg's usual metaphor of choice. Grissom, yes; Greg hardly.

"She's like that kid with the magnifying glass playing with ants. Playing God."

 _As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods, they kill us for their sport,_ Sara's mind involuntarily supplied.

Perhaps she had, as Greg had claimed mere minutes before, been spending too much time with Grissom, as she was definitely starting to think in quotations again. Shakespeare had always been one of her husband's particular specialties _._

 _If you were going to steal, steal something worth taking_ , he'd frequently maintained when Sara called him out on the habit.

But the Bard's words held little comfort when not intoned in Grissom's deep, rich, carefully measured voice.

As for Greg's ants -

"Breadcrumbs," Sara replied, "to lead us on her merry way."

"Just enough to keep us busy," Greg agreed. "Not enough to help."

"I don't think _help_ is what Hannah has in mind.

"Oh, she wants us to know she did it. And how. So we can see just how clever she really is -"

Greg nearly growled, "And how dumb we are."

"But we're missing something," Sara fiercely maintained. "I can feel it. We have to be able to work it out. Otherwise there's no sport in her game.

"That's why she didn't just kill him and dump his body somewhere.

"Hannah knows it's far, far worse knowing that if you had been smart enough - quick enough - you could have figured it all out before it was too late."

Sara shivered at the thought.

 _Too late._

She had said as much to Grissom once, warned him: _You know, by the time you figure it out, you really could be too late_.

She didn't want to even begin to think what her being too late now might mean.

Yes, she'd spent much of the last three years without him. Much of the years before that, too. But this, this would be different; final in a way she didn't want to have to even begin to comprehend.

It was this understanding which tinged her next words with grief, not for Hannah, but herself.

"It's that fact she's had to live with everyday for the last eight years."

Greg, for his part, couldn't summon up the slightest bit of sympathy for the psychopathic wunderkind, grieving or not. Not when it was Grissom gone and Sara hurting.

At the moment, Greg almost wished he had one of Grissom's quotations handy. Grissom, he rued, always seemed to know what to say, even if frequently someone else had said it first.

But Greg could think of nothing.

Unsurprisingly, Sara still had Hannah on her mind.

"She's right," she said after a long moment. " _Très-bien froide_ indeed."

Then it hit her.

And Sara finally understood why her husband had so frequently extolled the virtues of doing nothing.

Sometimes you had to stop thinking so hard about a problem before the obvious solution could present itself.

It was simple. And staring them in the face ever since they'd arrived at their first crime scene that morning.

Sara shook her head. She could almost hear Grissom sagely intoning in what she had grown to think of as his mentor voice: _You see, but you do not observe_. In this, Grissom and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's most famous detective had a point.

She'd seen plenty that morning and yet missed the biggest clue of all.

"' _Ice would suffice_ ,'" she murmured absently.

Then looking far more animated than she had in hours, she turned to Greg.

"Anybody work out where those three bodies came from?"

"I don't thinks so," he replied surprised. "With Grissom missing it wasn't exactly high on the priority list -"

Without a word of further explanation Sara clambered to her feet and was out the door so fast she left Greg still sitting on the floor staring after her.

"Sara -"

Whether she hadn't heard him or not, she didn't stop. Greg was nearly breathless by the time he finally managed to catch up with her in the hall.

" _Sara_ -" he panted again.

Sara turned to him as if he'd been beside her all along.

"Think about it," she said her eyes bright and face flushed with excitement. "Where would you hide a stick?"

"What?"

Sara didn't slow her pace, though she did repeat her question.

"I heard you the first time," Greg replied. "Why - Why would you want to hide a stick?"

She didn't answer; only waited for his.

"You definitely spent way too much time listening to Russell."

"Just answer the question, Greg."

Greg threw up his hands. "Where would you hide a stick? I dunno."

"In a forest," Sara supplied, as if the answer were obvious all along.

 _And?!_ Greg thought but did not say, unable to quite make out the connection.

Sara was still speaking anyway, even more hurried now: "So where would you hide a body you didn't want any one to notice right away?

" _With other bodies._

"Look, we already know Hannah somehow managed to get three bodies out. It couldn't be any harder to sneak one _in_. So if we track down where those bodies came from -"

Greg finally grasped where Sara was going.

"It might lead us to where she's hidden Grissom," he finished.

"Exactly," Sara agreed, pleased.

"' _Mortui vivis praecipant_ : Let the dead teach the living,'" she quoted sagely.

"After all, the dead don't lie."

xxxxxxx

Hapless Greg in tow, Sara barreled through the doors of the Las Vegas Morgue, nearly crashing into Doctor Albert Robbins, the resident Medical Examiner, in midst of donning his lab coat.

Robbins waived off her hurried apology with a kindly "Sara - I didn't expect to see you down here. Not with Gil -"

Even consummate professional that he was, Doc couldn't seem to get out the word _gone_. _Dead_ would have been even harder. Particularly as he and Grissom had once long been friends.

He opted for guarded optimism instead. "Any news?" he asked.

To his astonishment, Sara actually grinned.

"We're hoping you might have some," she replied. "Thought we'd come down to take a closer look at our three 'victims.'"

However still unclear what she and Greg, who followed apparently equally unsure in Sara's wake, wanted with his one John and two Jane Does, Doc readily ushered them to the cooler. "Be my guest."

Having flipped back the first white sheet, he slid on his reading glasses for a closer look.

"Let's see what we've got."

He peered down at the body, taking in the rushed dye job and the incongruity of a woman in her early forties done up in what must have been some form of now out of fashion Goth.

"You found her on campus like this?"

Sara nodded.

"She certainly doesn't look like your average college student though she's -"

"Made up to look like one?" Sara finished. "Yeah, I noticed that too. Wherever she got them from, Hannah probably didn't have her choice of bodies."

"I suppose that should be a comforting thought," Robbins sighed.

"At least she's not killing to create her little tableaus," Greg piped in.

"Not yet," muttered Sara.

Doc proceeded to uncover Greg and Morgan's hanged man from that morning. He gave the corpse a thorough once over. "No visible de-comp. Both this and the other one have been well preserved and cared for."

Which was when Sara asked what she most wanted to know: "But where did she get them? Cadavers aren't that easy to come by."

"Unless you're losing bodies out of the morgue again," said Greg.

Robbins shot him a dirty look before replying, "If memory serves -"

And his tone suggested it did.

"We didn't lose that one in the first place."

Apparently his department initially being blamed for James Billmeyer missing from out of his morgue cabinet, only to be found parked outside of P.D. with a party hat on his head and a cigar in his mouth, was still a sore point for the M.E.

Greg was saved from any more of Robbin's ire by David Phillips striding in, shrugging on his own lab coat in between a couple of hacking coughs.

While a bit breathless, he didn't miss a beat. "I already checked the hospitals and funeral homes in the area. No one's missing one body, let alone three," he reported.

"Shouldn't you be home in bed?" Came Sara's concerned query.

"Was in the office dozing. Heard you were here and rushed over."

Sara was touched more than she could say at this.

Dave shrugged off her gratitude. Motioning to the two uncovered bodies, he said, "I already printed those two. No matches."

"That's not a big surprise," said Doc. "Not everyone who dies in Las Vegas gets autopsied. We just don't have the time or the resources to put everybody in the system."

"And there's no guarantee these two are even locals," added Dave.

"What I can tell you," Doc began, removing his spectacles, "is they've both been cut up - but not by us.

"But then you knew that already."

"Don't tell me Hannah's playing Frankenstein in her spare time," said Greg.

"More like gross anatomy," Robbins countered. "Albeit _elementary_ gross anatomy.

"See the hesitation marks," he circled several shallow incisions along the man's chest with a gloved finger. "And the inexpert cuts." He indicated the crooked line that transversed the lower thoracic cavity.

"I haven't seen work this shoddy since first semester med school."

"It's almost like reverse grave robbing," Phillips observed absently.

Intrigued, Sara turned to him. "What do you mean?"

"Instead of digging up bodies for dissection, she's putting dissected bodies back."

"Resurrection men in reverse," nodded Doc.

At Greg and Sara's continued blank looks, Dave explained, "Resurrection men were glorified grave robbers. Except they were far more interested in bodies than booty."

"In the Nineteenth Century bodies were booty," said Robbins. "Once vivisection became an integral part of the study of medicine, the demand for bodies always exceeded the supply.

"Particularly the legal supply.

"So universities and medical schools - even prestigious ones like Harvard - frequently employed resurrection men to go into the cemeteries at night to dig up the recently buried," Doc continued.

"Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase 'invasion of the body snatchers,'" interjected Greg.

"The official term for it was _necrostuprum_ ," finished Robbins.

"So you're suggesting Hannah may have taken her bodies from some sort of anatomy lab?" Sara asked.

"That would be my best educated guess," agreed Doc. "Would explain the higher than usual levels of formalin in the bodies, plainly detectible by scent alone.

"At this sort of concentration, cadavers can last for years.

"There's only one problem -"

Sara immediately got where he was going with this. "No med schools in Vegas."

"So much for all of Howard Hughes' promises," quipped Greg.

"Nearest med school in Nevada is in Reno. Even L.A. is five hours away."

While none of this was encouraging, Sara wasn't near ready to give up yet.

"What about our lady in the shower curtain? We know anything about her?" she asked.

Dave pulled on a pair of gloves of his own. "Was waiting for you guys to unwrap her."

Doc gave him the go ahead to slit open the opaque cocoon. Easing the edges apart, Dave finally got a good look at the woman's face.

Peering at her intently, he said, "She was a Jane Doe."

"She can't be," protested Doc. "Unclaimed bodies can't be used for research. By law they can only be cremated."

"I didn't say she _is_ one. She _was_ one. She came in as a Jane Doe. Days was backlogged -"

They all thought, but didn't say, _When wasn't Days backlogged_?

"So she was still waiting in the cooler when her father came by to ID the body that night."

"You never opened her up?" Sara asked.

"Not my call. Marks' case. He claimed she was under doctor's care. Cancer. Said her father didn't want her body disturbed," Dave explained.

Which made sense. Professionally autopsied bodies made poor study cadavers. If that's what she was.

"Suspicious circs?"

"Apart from being found out in the middle of nowhere? You'd have to ask Marks. All I know, he was more than willing to close the case as a natural."

This came as no surprise to any of them. Quentin Marks, a level three assigned to Days, tended to be a little quick on the close.

Sara indicated the body on the gurney still half reposed in her stiff shower curtain shroud.

"You remember her name by any chance?"

"Not off the top of my head," Dave replied. "But her prints should be in the system."

Phillips went to retrieve the departmental handheld electronic fingerprint scanner. When he returned, Sara gingerly lifted the woman's right arm from its plastic shroud so that Dave could run her prints.

Near instantaneously the screen registered a match. Dave extended it, the better for Sara and Greg to see.

Margaret Baxter

D.O.B. 7/7/1977

D.O.D. 5/17/2015

Location of Death: Trails near Spring Mountain Visitor Gateway, Mount Charleston, NV

Last Known Address: 1603 Anthony Drive, Las Vegas, NV 89101

"Phone," Sara barked at Greg, her hand held out expectantly. "Give me your phone."

Her tone plainly brooking neither question nor refusal, Greg hurriedly handed it over.

Then not all that unlike her husband's habit of disappearing off without uttering another word, Sara strode out the door, pulling up Maps and hurriedly entering the address as she went.

xxxxxxx

Greg knew Sara was serious when she told him he should drive. She never let him drive. _Never_. He had, however, little chance to ask after her intentions, as she was far too busy scanning through Margret Baxter's case file on one of the lab's iPads while he drove.

Besides, there hadn't exactly been a lot of time, even if there had been opportunity. With traffic nearly nonexistent at such a late or rather very early hour, it wasn't long before the Denali pulled up in front of a rundown, what once had likely been an overwhelming foolishly optimistic cream colored postwar bungalow.

Still not entirely sure what they were doing here, Greg readily agreed to follow Sara's lead.

She gave the door a ready rap, then another.

"Mr. Baxter?" she asked when a pajama clad man finally opened the door. "Carl Baxter?"

Carl Baxter tugged the tie of his bathrobe tighter about him.

"Yeah, that's me."

Sara held up her badge; Greg did the same.

"Sara Sidle from the Las Vegas Crime Lab. This is Greg Sanders. We're sorry to get you out of bed at this hour."

Baxter dismissed her apology. "Don't sleep much these days anyway."

He certainly looked it. The house wasn't the only one who had seen far, far better days.

While his license indicated he had only just turned sixty-four, stoop shouldered and slumped spine as he was and with a head of thinning hair completely given over to white, he appeared far more like eighty. He had the air too of a man keeping vigil for someone who would never return.

After all her years as a CSI, Sara knew that look all too well.

"Mr. Baxter -" Sara began.

"Carl," he insisted.

"Carl. We were hoping you might be able to tell us a bit more about what happened to your daughter Margret."

"Mags?" he asked. "Come in. Come in." He ushered them inside. "Can I get you something? I've got coffee, but it's only instant."

Knowing how much Sara wanted to get straight to business, Greg interjected, "Thanks, but no."

Baxter clicked on a lamp in the living room and motioned for them to sit on a plastic covered sofa that probably predated Greg and Sara both.

"You guys doctors?" he asked, taking a seat in a well-worn rocker.

"No, criminalists," Sara replied. "Scientists," she added at his continued nonplussed look.

"Ah," he said, though he still seemed a bit unsure exactly what that meant. Obviously Carl Baxter didn't watch a lot of TV or at least none of the crime procedural variety.

"Mags always wanted to be a doctor growing up. I think it was the white coat. Only I didn't have the money for medical school. She didn't have the grades," he shrugged. "She talked about going into nursing for a bit. Plenty of those jobs out there these days.

"But she hadn't even made it through her freshman year when Ellen got sick. Her mother," he explained. "I had to work so we could keep our health insurance. Extra shifts, too, to cover all the bills. I couldn't take care of her, so Mags did. Never once complained about it either.

"She was dead within a year."

He spat out the word _cancer_ as if left a bitter taste in his mouth.

"Then the economy tanked. I got laid off. No degree, but too much experience to get hired on anywhere else. Mags worked two jobs just so we could keep the house she grew up in.

"My Mags always was a good girl like that. Never any trouble. Never. Not even as a teenager. Can you believe that?"

"She sounds like she was a special person," Sara offered kindly.

Baxter nodded. "Deserved far better than what she got. No life. Stuck here with her old man. Then her cancer came back."

"Came back?" Greg asked.

"She'd had a double mastectomy at thirty-two. Reconstructive surgery after being cancer free for two years. Then last year, it was back. Only the doctors said it wasn't the same kind of cancer. That it had something to do with her implants.

"Look -" His voice held the hint of frustrated anger. "I never made it out of high school, so I never understood all that medical gobbledygook. All I know is she was tired of the treatments. Didn't want to go through that all again. Said if it was her time to go, it was her time to go."

Sara stilled, recalling a time long ago it now seemed with her and Nick Stokes sitting at a picnic table in a park discussing the case of a missing girl. And her uncharacteristically having to play the voice of reason.

"You're acting like you're going to rescue a person, not recover a body," she had told him back then, "and on this job that's just not usually the case."

To which he'd only grinned that great big Texas grin of his at her. "I was rescued."

Happily, Nick had been.

Still, she'd said, "It was not your day to die. When it's your day, it's your day, you know?"

More than ten years later, Sara prayed that today was not going to be Gil Grissom's day.

Baxter cut into Sara's musings.

"Anyway, you guys probably know more about how she died than I do."

Sara jolted back to the present. Now was not the time for distractions.

"File said they found her out on one of the trails near the Spring Mountain Visitor Gateway in Mount Charleston," she supplied.

"That's what they told me. Mags liked to go there on her days off. She went for the green. Or so she always used to say."

Sara couldn't blame her. There was something refreshing about the verdant hills of Mount Charleston. There always had been.

It was then Sara realized with a start that Margret Baxter had been found only a few miles from where she and Grissom had set up their little sting operation (as he had more than once tongue-in-cheek referred to it as) to track down the man behind the Eclipse and Vegas school bombings.

Her mind however didn't get the chance to drift too far down that bittersweet road as Carl was saying, "Me? I think she knew. She just didn't want me to be the one who found her like that.

"She was like that, Mags. Always far too good for a man like me. Her mother was just the same."

As the old man's voice trailed off, Greg murmured, "We're sorry for your loss."

Sara suddenly blanched.

Not that she hadn't uttered those selfsame words all too many times over the years _._ She'd said those very ones _I'm sorry for your loss_ \- and meant them, too - to a grieving Mrs. Karamini, the unfortunate wife of the man Dalton Betton had persuaded into donning a suicide vest and setting it off in a Vegas casino.

However not until this very moment did she realize how hollow those words and their attendant well practiced, well-meant sympathy sounded.

And soon, all too soon, she might be the one on their receiving end.

 _I'm sorry for your loss._

Except it wouldn't be a stranger this time.

It would be her husband - lover - best friend - her loss - on that table.

 _Loss -_

Why did they speak of death that way? she wondered. You didn't _lose_ a person when they died. Not the way you lost a pair of reading glasses or your keys or an umbrella.

The dead weren't lost. You knew exactly where they were, where they'd be. It wasn't like they'd be going anywhere else anytime soon.

So, no, not lost at all. Just not coming home. Ever again.

Grissom, she knew, would be off at the body farm, where he'd always wanted to go, his intentions nice, neat and scientific as ever.

And him gone all the same.

Willing herself to focus, Sara shoved these thoughts aside.

 _Focus, focus, Sidle,_ she told herself. _He needs you to focus on the right here, right now_.

"I know I wasn't always the best father," Carl Baxter sighed. "But no father should have to bury his own daughter."

When Sara didn't ask, Greg stepped in. "Only she wasn't buried was she, Carl?"

A twitch of the lips joined Carl's shake of the head. "Mags was thrilled when she found out she could still donate her body for medical research. She thought she might not be able to with the cancer and all.

"Thought then her death might not be a waste. She just wanted something good to come out of all that bad. And this way she'd finally get to go to med school."

"Do you have any idea where her body went?" Sara asked, finally getting to what she had come for.

"It's not in your files?" a genuinely perplexed Baxter asked.

Sara hadn't quite managed to make it through all the paperwork during their short ride over. "If you could tell us -" she said.

"They told me someone from the nursing department at the WLVU campus came by to pick up her body the day after I... I came in to identify it."

"WLVU?" Greg asked, himself even more confused.

Only Sara wasn't.

When she rose a bit too quickly, he shot her a curious look.

"Mr. Baxter - _Carl_ -" she hurriedly corrected herself, in a desperate rush, but equally desperate not to come off as impolite. "Thank you... Thank you for your time.

"You... You've been very helpful. _Very helpful._ "

Even though Baxter couldn't imagine how, he murmured, "Sure."

Sara motioned to Greg that they needed to go. _Now._

"Good night," Greg hastily added, though he had the distinct feeling Carl Baxter had precious few of those these days.

The old man didn't even rise to see them to the door. He wouldn't have been able to keep up with Sara in any case.

The screen door had barely banged shut behind him when Greg shouted, "Sara? Sara, stop!"

She didn't.

He jogged up; snagged her by the arm. "Sara, wait. I don't understand."

Except when she turned to face him, he found not fear or tears or hurt on her face, but comprehension.

"Give me the keys. Get in the car and I'll show you," she insisted. "I know where Hannah's got him."

Greg did as he was told.

Sara pulled up a map of the campus on her iPad.

"Here - Here - And here -" She pointed to three locations. "That's where we found our three 'bodies _.'_ See how they're all clustered on this one end of campus?

"It's the magician's assistant."

"A diversion?" Greg asked.

"Deflection. Security, police, the lab, would all be too busy over here to notice anything going on on the other side of campus."

"But what's on the other side of campus?"

Sara pinched the map to enlarge a building. "This: the Science Teaching Labs."

"Sara, you heard Doc. WLVU doesn't have a medical school."

"But they do have an advanced nursing program which offers anatomy and physiology, including full anatomical dissection.

"You don't remember Catherine once telling us about her campus tour with Lindsey?"

What this had to do with anything, Greg had no clue.

"Catherine said Lindsey made a big stink at the time about not having a look in the lab. One, because she had no interest whatsoever in nursing, but mostly because thanks to her mom, she'd already managed to see plenty of dead bodies."

Greg shrugged. "Guess she had a change of heart."

Sara ignored this.

"Hannah's a chemistry post doc. Even with the campus closed for the holiday, she'd still have access to those labs."

When Greg continued to look skeptical, Sara now near breathless with urgency insisted, "Just let me have your phone. If you won't make the call, I will."

xxxxxxx

Conrad Ecklie, in the midst of yet another frustratingly fruitless post evidence review conference with Catherine, Morgan and Lindsey, picked up on the second ring.

"Greg?" he asked. "Wait, wait, slow down.

"Where are you anyway?"

The women all stared at the phone waiting for Greg's reply. Ecklie listened intently.

He turned to Morgan. "Call the University. Get the President out of bed if you have to.

"We need access to their anatomy lab. _Now_."

By the time he had returned his attention to Catherine, she was already gone.

xxxxxxx

In the rear of WLVU's Anatomy/Physiology Lab, the still sleepy building manager tried his keycard in the swipe lock. It jammed halfway.

He tried again and a third time, all with the same result.

Greg tugged him back; clicked on the Maglite from his vest to take a better look, only to end up stating the obvious. "There's something stuck in the lock. Can you get it out?"

"Not without dismantling the door."

"We don't have time for that."

"Wait," interjected Sara from where she and Catherine stood off to the side, "did dispatch call for aid? Fire as well as medic?"

"Were five minutes out last I heard," Catherine replied, then comprehending precisely what Sara was suggesting, drew out her phone to call it in.

"Have them bring up the Jaws of Life," she ordered into it. "And hurry."

Sara only prayed they'd managed to get there in time to find Grissom and not just another corpse.

Outside sirens screamed. Heavy footfalls echoed through the empty halls. Several fully clad firemen barreled in equipment in hand. The paramedics weren't far behind.

Soon the handheld hydraulic spreader-cutter whined as it forced the heavy metal cooler door off its hinges. There was a loud thunk before four men stepped in to wrestle it further wide.

 _If he wasn't here -_

Sara couldn't even begin to complete that thought.

A waft of preservative laden air hit them all full in the face, along with the rank odor of vomit, urine and human waste.

Grissom had to be here.

The firemen had barely stepped aside before Sara bolted in.

Catherine called for lights. A repeated flick of the switch revealed them disabled.

Palming his own flashlight into her anxious hand, Greg joined Sara. Catherine handed him a spare from a waiting patrol officer.

The three of them quickly set to work whipping sheets from near frozen faces, their small pools of bright searching for familiar features.

Greg stopped, his beam illuminating a puddle of half dried blood beside a gurney.

"Sara-" he called, so soft she almost didn't hear him.

Sara soon saw why.

It was Grissom.

Quiet and stone stiff still. His blued chapped lips barely parted. His bare skin greyed. His darkening eyelids clamped closed, not the least bit like the way they had when Sara had left him softly sleeping only the morning before.

"Gil -" Sara gasped, wending her way through to his side.

But there was no time for shock - or fear.

"Let's get him out of here," Catherine insisted, even her voice far more trembling than calm.

They gave the gurney a frantic tug; the casters held fast.

The wheels finally popped free, they rapidly rolled him out.

"Careful, careful," Catherine urged.

Only Gil Grissom looked even worse beneath the glaring overhead lights.

 _So still and -_

"You guys got keys?" a paramedic asked, indicating Grissom's handcuff bound hands and feet.

The same officer who had surrendered his light passed over his set of handcuff keys.

Frantically, Greg, Catherine and Sara all fumbled with the locks.

At the feel of her husband's flesh cold under her fearful fingers, Sara's breath caught in her throat.

Of course Grissom was always cold. The man wore jackets in July in Vegas for heaven sake. But while he was, strangely his hands had never felt that way. Sara had always found them warm and tender in their touch. To find them now like this, like ice, so cold it almost burned her hands -

Leaning in, Sara held her breath waiting for any sign of his.

Only there were no clouds, not even a wisp or a whisper.

"Gil," she gasped again, still struggling with the cuffs _. "Gil -"_

No response.

Once finally freed, she cradled his bruised and rubbed raw wrist in her hands.

"Gil, I - I swear - If - If you die on me now - So help me - I'll never - _never_ \- forgive you -"

He didn't stir. At this or at her touch.

Gentle, yet no less firm, Greg drew her back. "Come on," he urged, his voice, too not entirely even. "Let the paramedics do their job."

Sara reluctantly agreed.

Forget feeling sick, she was having a hard time breathing.

Perhaps in what was would likely prove a mostly vain attempt at reassurance, some distant part of her brain chimed: _You're not dead until you're warm and dead._

Which proved little comfort as her heart begged: _Not Dead. Not Dead. Not Dead._

All around her, the squad of paramedics worked, their words filling her far more with fear than ease.

"He's cyanotic. No pulse. No breathing sounds."

"Body temp's dropped to eighty-three degrees."

"I can't get a line in."

"Commencing rescue breathing. Ready the A.E.D."

Catherine tugged Sara towards the door. "You don't need to see this."

Sara squared her jaw; dug in her heels. "I'm not going anywhere."

A loud zap replaced the regular rhythm of CPR. The monitor droned.

Then it all began again as they waited for the electrical unit to recharge.

Press - Press - Press -

Zap. Whine.

Press - Press - Press -

Zap. Whine.

Press - Press - Press -

Zap. Whine.

The longer it lasted, the less air there seemed to be in the room.

Practically propped up between her two friends, Sara stood there begging for the monitor to register something, anything.

Anything other than that still, forbidding flat line.


	22. Twenty-two: Waiting is

**Twenty-Two: Waiting is...**

 _Waiting is..._

Or so her husband had once quoted to her, the exact occasion of which Sara couldn't quite recall. While Grissom - and Heinlein - may admittedly have had a point, Sara found it currently as of little comfort as it had been then, even if the truth was, that really was the best that could be said on the subject.

Waiting just was.

And there was nothing to be done but wait - and worry.

 _Waiting sucks_ , Sara wanted retort.

It had been hours, she was sure of it. It had to be. Hours since they pulled him from that cooler, cold and nearly blue. Hours since the EMTs rushed him to the Flight for Life copter, continuing to work on him as they raced beneath the rotors. Hours since she'd hadn't been allowed to go with him. There hadn't been time. Only time to watch the bird rise and disappear into the sky. Hours, too, since Greg grabbed her before she collapsed onto the pavement while Catherine rushed to get the car. Hours since Sara sank into the passenger seat, forgetting even about the belt as Catherine assured her it wouldn't be long. And yet, it had to be hours since they trailed behind the near deafening blare of sirens and blinding flash of lights all the way the Desert Palms. Hours since she barreled breathless into the Emergency Room seeking news, any news of him, only to be told nothing more than _They're working on your husband now._ That whenthey _know more, she would of course be the first to know_. Until then, no news had to be good news. Even if it wasn't.

Sara might not have been nosocomephobic, but hospitals certainly weren't high on her favorite places on the planet list. She'd spent too much time in them as patient, visitor and investigator.

Hospitals most definitely sucked.

Perhaps it was that cloying sickly sweet antiseptic smell that never seemed to wash off and instead took days, which felt more like weeks, to fade.

Plus somehow she'd forgotten how frigid they regularly kept the place. Hugging herself made her no warmer, nor did the pacing do anything to relieve the bone chill.

The cold burned through and through.

He'd been cold - cadaverous cold - when she had taken up his hand.

No, she wasn't going to think about it - about him like that -

Sara tried not to think what each passing moment portended. If the longer the wait meant the better or the worser the news.

All she could do was pace. Sitting still was not an option. Not with her chest already too tight; breathing too hard. There was nothing else she could do with her restless anxiety but walk and wait and worry her wedding ring as she went.

After little more than a week, the ring felt foreign, and yet familiar on her finger.

She couldn't imagine her hand without it.

For a long time post-divorce her left hand had felt oddly bare sans band. Its return had felt like a sign that everything was on its way back to being the way things were supposed to be.

Its presence proved scant comfort now.

Twisting and turning it as she proved intent on doing, the words engraved inside caressed along her skin: _To Sara from Grissom_.

Sara knew no one else would regard them as particularly romantic, those four words, but they meant the world to her. They always had. He'd signed the card to that plant he'd first her sent that way. Then those words had meant _Stay, please stay_. Inscribed onto her wedding ring they meant much the same: _Stay, please stay always_. Sara had known that the moment she'd held up the ring to read the message. Then the sight had made her smile. Right now, as she nearly worried the ring off her finger, the thought of it - of him - nearly made her cry.

Sara wasn't ready to say good-bye. Not here. Not now. She wasn't ready to lose Grissom all over again. Not when they'd both only been so recently found.

No, certainly not so soon. Not ever, if she could have her way.

So she waited her way through life's small eternities, all the seconds and minutes and hours that each felt more like days.

No, no news was definitely _not_ good news.

While Greg and Catherine stayed, they let her fret in silence. Which was far better than all the usual hollow reassurances, no matter how well meant. Greg sat with his shoulders slack and head slumped staring at his shoes. Catherine clutched her cell, waiting to give or receive news as it came.

After what seemed an inordinately long time later, it finally did.

A weary looking intern made a beeline for their little trio. Sara held her breath. Catherine grasped her hand; grimaced when Sara returned the grip even harder. From the doctor's dour look all three feared the worst.

"Mrs. Grissom?" he asked.

Sara didn't bother to correct him. She only stammered, "My... My husband?"

And in that moment she realized this was one of the first occasions she'd had since their remarriage to name him as such to someone else.

And now, Gil, her husband, might be -

Sara shoved that thought aside.

The doctor, whose lab coat read Dr. Sherman Andrews, indicated the rear entrance to the E.R. "Will you come with me, please?"

Sara motioned to her companions, "Can they -"

"Of course."

His kind smile, however, appeared forced. With the hurried gait of the perpetually harried and harassed, the doctor ushered them through the double doors and down what felt like an interminable hall, not to an exam or procedure room as Sara had expected, but to a small, windowless cube furnished with the sort of furniture and the obligatory Kleenex box meant to mitigate the receipt of bad news.

Not entirely immune to Sara's distress, the doctor suggested she take a seat. While the others did, Sara shook her head, every bit of her begging for him to say anything and nothing all at once.

Accepting her decision without any further comment, Dr. Andrews launched in, "Mrs. Grissom, you are aware that when your husband was brought in, he was highly hypothermic and non-responsive."

Sara nodded.

"Neither the onsite EMTs nor the flight nurses were able to locate a pulse or breath signs. But as his core temperature was down to eighty-three degrees they immediately began CPR because -"

" _You're not dead until you're warm and dead_ ," Sara said. The axiom had been one of her very few comforts.

"That's right," Andrews smiled encouragingly.

"Both chest compressions and defibrillation were continued here in the E.R.," he continued. "We worked on him for a two solid hours -"

Sara was suddenly having a distinctly difficult time push air past the solid lump in her throat.

"Before we finally managed to get him back into rhythm."

Gasping, Sara sank into a seat. Catherine covered her mouth with her hands in relief. Greg patted Sara's shoulder.

"Now, he's still highly hypothermic," the physician counseled. "We've got him on a bypass machine to help slowly warm him back up.

"Because of his age and the extreme resuscitation duration, the trauma team has opted for a slower than usual rewarming approach. No faster than a degree an hour.

"Which means you're looking at another fifteen hours _minimum_ before we really know anything."

What the doctor had the tact not to say was that apart from all that had been done to him, Gil Grissom hadn't exactly been taking the best care of himself during the years he and Sara had been apart. Neither however had escaped Sara's notice.

"I won't lie to you," the doctor continued. "There's a significant risk of complications, even death, during any rewarming process."

For more than a few hypothermia patients, Sara knew, it wasn't the cold that killed them, but rather the shock of any rescue and revival practices. Only she couldn't dwell overlong on this unhappy bit of knowledge, as the doctor wasn't finished.

"That and with the high levels of scorpion venom still in his system, anything goes really.

"Like I said, once we get him closer to ninety-eight degrees, we may know a little more. But even then it will likely be a few more hours before we even think about weaning him off the sedation.

"So, it will be a while before he comes to."

Again the doctor neglected to say: _If he comes to_. Sara heard the unspoken warning plain as day anyway.

If Grissom didn't come to, his wife knew his wishes. Those were one thing that hadn't changed. No heroic life-prolonging measures. No life lived solely via life support. Sara knew she would respect his choices even if it broke her heart to fulfill them. She just prayed it wouldn't come to that.

"It's going to be a rather long eighteen plus hours. There's no reason for you to wait. I suggest you all go home and get some rest."

Catherine Willows knew the odds of that happening were exactly somewhere between nil and zilch.

"No," Sara said, her voice faint and firm all at once.

There was no way she could return to her apartment without Grissom. It really would feel too much like the last few months had never happened. That if she went and stayed and slept in her own bed, she really would wake to find it all - the sea, the sky, his hand in hers, his body in the bed beside her, the ring returned to her finger - no more lasting than a dream.

Sara couldn't handle that nightmare right now.

Catherine, taking the doctor by the elbow, steered him off to the side. "Look, the two of them were just married last week. You can't tell me there isn't something - some way -"

Dr. Andrews seemed to consider this. Then in direct contradiction to his usual brusque deadpan demeanor he said, "He'll have to be kept in isolation in the ICU until he's off the bypass machine. No visitors. There's nothing I can do about that.

"But she can wait on the floor if that's what she wants. The iso units are partially glassed. So she can see him -"

"Even if she can't go in and see him," finished Catherine.

The doctor held up his hands. "It's the best I can do."

Catherine nodded her gratitude. "It's plenty. Thank you."

The doctor turned back to Sara. "Mrs. Grissom, I have to warn you. It won't be an easy process to sit through.

"At some point his own body will start trying to warm itself on its own. The shivering can become quite... _unpleasant_ to witness."

"I don't care," replied Sara. And she didn't. All she wanted right now was to see him, be with him, even if it was only on the other side of the glass.

"Okay," he reluctantly agreed with the unspoken hope that she knew what she was setting herself up for. "I'll have someone come down and get you once they've got him settled in in ICU. It's still early. Really early, and I can't - and won't - make you any promises.

"But I can tell you we're doing everything we can for your husband."

Her eyes wet and blinking fast, Sara took the doctor's proffered hand and shook it firmly, meaning it more than the man could know when she said, "Thank you. Thank you."

xxxxxxx

Thus, Sara found herself yet again in that same twenty-four hour period, trapped on the other side of the glass, left to watch and wait and to be able to do nothing but watch and wait.

While the day's earlier blue bottle futility may have finally given way, at the moment, she felt more impotent, rather than less. There was still nothing she could do.

And Sara Sidle sucked at doing nothing.

Too anxious to sit, too tired to pace, she leaned head and hands against the cold, unyielding glass. Exhausted, beyond exhausted, her eyes itched with fatigue and fear.

She had thought it would be enough, just to be able to see him. That that would prove comfort enough. It hadn't.

The transparent inches might as well have been miles for how far it separated them, particularly when all Sara wanted to do was hold him, hold him as close as she could and tell him - and herself - that she was here. He was here. He would be okay. She would be okay. They would be okay.

Right now nothing felt okay.

Part of her wanted to sob, to scream, to beat her fists against that glass, to rage and roar. None of it, she knew, would do any good. And if she started crying now Sara wasn't certain she'd be able to stop.

What made it all the worse was that figure laying there so heavily draped in blankets, covered in tubes, wires and lines, that face obscured by an oxygen mask, didn't in the least resemble her husband. No, not at all like the man she had left so peacefully slumbering but a day before.

Still, she watched the machines do their work. Watched his temperature slowly creep. Watched his heartbeat dance along the monitor. Beside the bed, the bypass machine whirred red in/red out, returning his body cold blood just a bit warmer. Too quick and his body could go into shock, his heart could stop and he would stop, so slow and steady, slow and steady.

Her massaging fingers brushed along the elastic band still tugged tight along her left arm from where she had given blood. They'd needed it and more. Sadly, supplies always seemed to run low during the holiday season. It had been the one and only thing Sara had been able to do.

Not the she wouldn't have gladly given far more than the pint they'd taken. She tried to take comfort in the fact that part of her was inside him now, the increase in blood volume hopefully better for bathing his cells in warmth.

The doctor hadn't been exaggerating. It was hard to watch: the shivering.

Time and time again, she had to tell herself that it was normal, scary looking, yes, but normal. And not only normal, but a good sign, that his body was starting to recover from the cold on its own. It was life trying to reassert itself.

And life, as Sara knew all too well, had the nasty habit of being brutal.

When the shivering shake turned to violent thrash, two nurses went in and wordlessly set about restraining him. Grissom's body only continued to buck against the bonds so hard there would likely be fresh bruises blossoming beneath the bandages at his wrists and ankles.

Watching, waiting there, Sara was glad she had sent both Catherine and Greg away several hours before. Unlike her, all too soon they would have to head back to work. Vegas was Vegas after all.

Neither had been all the keen on leaving her there alone, but Sara had assured them she'd be fine, they should _Go, just go._

Greg went without protest; Catherine lingered a little longer.

While she momentarily considered suggesting to Sara that she, too, should head home, shower, change, rest, Catherine Willows knew the futility of that suggestion.

So she simply murmured a resigned, "He wouldn't go without you either."

Resting a reassuring hand on Sara's shoulder, Catherine said softly, "You saw the gouges along his wrists and ankles..."

Sara had, marked all too well the deep gashes circling his flesh as she had struggled to unlock the handcuff holding him fast to the gurney. There had been blood, too, his blood pooled in his palm; splattered against the floor. It was a sight, a moment, she wasn't likely to forget.

But Catherine had meant something else by the mentioning.

"He fought," she maintained. "He fought for you. And we both know he's a stubborn son-of-a-bitch.

"There's no way he's going to stop fighting now."

Sara nodded, trying hard to hold on to that love that right now hurt like hell.


	23. Twenty-three: Mothering

**Twenty-three: Mothering**

Treacle time trickled on.

Sara was in midst of attempting to wipe the weariness from her eyes when the sounds of too too rapid footfalls roughly jerked her back to the present. Her head shot up to find Betty Grissom striding down the hall, sans her usual translator, wide-eyed and breathless.

 _Oh, God, Betty._

It wasn't that Sara had intentionally forgotten to call her mother-in-law exactly. True, she hadn't called. Sara hadn't really seen the point of it, not when she still had no real news to tell her. Plus, Sara already felt helpless and powerless enough as it was. She hadn't wanted to put Betty in that position as well. As little as there had been for Sara to do, there would be even less for Grissom's mother.

Besides, telling Betty really would make it all the more real than Sara was honestly ready to handle at the moment.

That and part of her feared Betty would blame her. Not so far fetched a worry when Sara already blamed herself.

So she hadn't called.

Apparently, Betty had found out anyway. In some ways Sara wasn't the least bit surprised.

Whirlwind as she was, even at her age, when a nurse at the station tried to waylay her, Betty Grissom simply brushed passed her, resolutely seeking out Sara.

Sara simultaneous signed and spoke.

To the nurse she said, "It's okay. She's his mother."

To her mother-in-law, she signed, "Betty - I'm sorry - I should have called -"

But just as abruptly as she had appeared, once she reached the glass, the elder Mrs. Grissom only had eyes for her son.

Somehow over the last few hours Sara had become inured to the sight. She tried to imagine what he must look like to his mother, her son covered in tubes, restrained and shivering as if his life depended on it. Which it did.

No wonder Betty was white with fear and worry.

David Hodges trotted up, a bit breathless. At this, Sara finally understood how Betty could have known. She should have known. The king of the lab rats wasn't exactly known for his discretion.

Only Hodges wasn't his usual smug self. Instead, he looked far more apologetic than Sara was used to seeing him.

Upon finally reaching Sara, he indicated Betty who still proved far more intent on her son than them.

"She... She kept calling. I had to pick up," he offered by way of explanation.

Sara didn't bother asking what Hodges had been doing with either one of their phones. She didn't really want to know.

There wasn't any time for Sara's questions in any case as her mother-in-law was presently intent on pressing her with queries of her own.

Only Betty, whose signing was usually as equally restrained as her demeanor, had begun gesturing far more frantic and frenetic than Sara had any hopes of following. Twice she had to ask for the elder Mrs. Grissom to slow down and repeat herself.

 _I don't understand_ , Betty signed slightly slower this time. _David_ , she motioned to Hodges who still looked sheepish, _said something about a kidnapping and a freezer_.

Sara struggled to find a way to begin, only finding her still far too limited ASL vocabulary utterly inadequate.

Not that she had any idea how to sign _hypothermia_ or _bradycardia_ or _bradypnea_. Or _extracorporeal membrane oxygenation_.

Or how even to begin to tell her about Hannah and how they had all ended up here in the first place, and it wasn't like she or Betty possessed the patience for finger signing.

With all the patented Grissom ever-preparedness, Betty pulled pen and paper from her purse; proceeded to pass it to Sara.

Sara nodded, understanding. She started to write it all out; only her hands shook so much she couldn't.

"Let me," Hodges quietly insisted, taking the pen from Sara. Sara had never been so happy to have the trace tech there.

Slowly, she began to dictate, still struggling over some words, hurrying over others. Thankfully, Betty didn't interrupt; didn't ask questions or seek out clarifications. That would have only made it all the harder.

The elder Mrs. Grissom only nodded that she understood and they should keep going. Her already pale, grave face only grew increasingly sober and somber as they continued on.

Hodges filled one page and half of another in his small cramped handwriting before Sara finally stopped.

And waited.

Waiting for Betty to turn her ever-critical gaze on her, Sara braced herself for all the blame and recriminations she knew would - and should - come.

After all, Sara was the reason Grissom was hooked up to machines and shivering on the other side of the glass. It had been Sara's work, Sara's case that had brought Grissom back to Vegas. Sara was the one Hannah had sought to punish by taking Grissom, hurting Grissom. _Sara_. And Sara knew it, too. Could only ache at the truth of it, ache, too, at anticipating all of Betty's fury to come.

Only it never did.

Instead, when Betty returned her gaze to Sara, her eyes were sad yet strangely soft and warm, as was the light, unexpected touch on Sara's arm.

 _How are you doing?_ she asked gently.

So completely caught off guard by the commonplace question, Sara forgot to sign, only spoke, her words coming out in yet another nervous torrent: "Betty, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

"I - I should have called - called earlier - But I thought - I don't know -"

Betty cut her off mid-exposition.

 _Breathe,_ she signed, her eyes suddenly speaking calm.

 _You've had more important things to deal with, I know._

Then her mother-in-law did something Sara certainly didn't expect. Before taking up one of Sara's hands in her own, she signed, _Come_.

Ushering Sara across the narrow hall to a collection of chairs, she instructed, _Sit_.

Sara sat.

 _Breathe._

Once Sara had to Betty's satisfaction, she asked again, _Are you okay?_

Sara shook her head. "I'm sorry -" Sara said again, swiftly wiping tears from her face.

 _There's no reason to apologize. He's your husband,_ Betty replied patting Sara's left hand understandingly.

 _Big surprise,_ Sara mused.

No way Betty Grissom was going to miss the return of the ring. Unlike her son, who frequently possessed a perpetual sort of social blindness, very little ever got passed his eagle-eyed mother.

Noticing Sara noticing her own gaze, Betty added, _Ring or no ring._

Strangely, her mother-in-law didn't seem the least bit upset; instead she appeared more quietly pleased than anything.

Still, Sara offered up yet another apology.

 _We... We were going to tell you at dinner_.

Both she and Grissom had agreed such news was, after all, best conveyed in person whenever possible. Only both husband and wife had inadvertently stood Betty up earlier the night before.

This didn't seem to bother Betty either. Her only comment was a succinct _About time_.

Though at least she'd been smiling slightly when she'd signed it.

Then Betty turned to Hodges still hovering nearby, failing as always to be unobtrusive. Politely, she asked him if he might bring them some tea. Hodges, pleased to be of service, happily complied.

Despite the hell of the present situation, Sara couldn't help but smirk at how Betty Grissom had already managed to have David Hodges happily wrapped around her little finger.

xxxxxxx

 _Here._

Betty passed Sara a neatly folded fabric square, a cotton handkerchief of the more feminine variety, one prettily embroidered and smelling, not as Grissom's did of his unscented laundry detergent, but of the sweet, green, equally clean scent of violets. The fragrance suited Betty somehow.

The gesture, so reminiscent of what Gil Grissom himself might have done, almost made Sara cry harder. Strange this, when she hadn't even realized she'd been weeping.

 _Better?_ Betty asked.

Oddly enough it was.

The two women sat there in a convivial stillness until Hodges returned with their tea. When Betty pressed one into Sara's palm, Sara clutched the tall paper cup in both hands, needing to use it to steady herself more than the drink it contained. The welcome warmth bled through to her fingers, itself a comfort against the persistent hospital chill.

 _Go on. Drink it_ , Betty urged and gave her once again daughter-in-law an approving half-smile when she did.

When Sara had sipped her way through half the cup, Betty asked, _When was the last time you had anything to eat?_

Part of her not entirely sure what day, let alone what time it was, Sara only shrugged at yet another of Betty's unanswerable questions, but then her mother-in-law always did have plenty of those.

Sara was far too tired to even try to work it out. In truth, with all the waiting and worrying, she had forgotten to be hungry or thirsty.

With a rueful shake of the head, Betty signed, _Gil needs to feed you better. You're looking a little too thin_.

When Sara actually chuckled aloud at this, the unexpected sound caused a still hovering Hodges to ask what Betty had said that had struck Sara so unusually funny.

"Just that I need to eat," Sara lied.

Hodges, however intrusive as he frequently could prove to be, opted not to comment, except to offer an earnest: "You should go - get something. I... I can always call you if there's any change."

Loathe as she was to leave, Sara countered with a pat of her empty pockets, "I... I still don't have a phone on me."

"Betty - _Mrs. Grissom_ ," Hodges hurriedly corrected himself, "does."

Sara's continued reluctance obvious, he added, "I'll call. _Promise_."

Before Sara even had a chance to answer, Betty signed a hurried _Thank you_ and tugging Sara to her feet, steered her by the elbow down the hall to the elevators.

xxxxxxx

It being the in-between hours post lunch but before break time and well before the next shift change, the Desert Palms Hospital cafeteria proved unsurprisingly quietly deserted.

Indicating the empty line, Betty signed, _I'll get it. You go get some air._

Food and fresh air, a chance to breathe, rest; all those were nearly the last things Sara was thinking about at the moment. Her first - and only - thoughts remained with the man in the bed upstairs.

Still, she went without protest, knowing we'll enough that when it came to Betty Grissom it was far, far simpler just to do as her mother-in-law asked than continue to contend.

With no phone or timepiece of her own, and the ICU ward curtained off and bathed in its perpetual fluorescent day, Sara possessed no real clue as to the hour. Hence her ending up blinking in the over bright as she stepped outside.

Despite the afternoon warmth, Sara hugged herself tight, her light jacket succeeding little in doing much to combat the chill that had settled into her bones ever since Hannah West had set Grissom's ring on the interrogation room table.

Forcefully exhaling as much of the horrible hospital atmosphere out as she could, Sara sucked in greedy mouthfuls of antiseptic free air.

It didn't help. Not really.

Particularly as with pang, Sara realized she currently stood only a few feet from the spot where she and Betty had their not so little spat nearly five years before.

A little too readily she recalled insisting then to her ever-critical mother-in-law that it didn't really matter what Betty thought, even thousands of miles away, Sara and Grissom were a family all the same.

After all, he really had been the only home she'd ever known.

True, she had missed him, missed him all the while he'd been away, that was true. But he'd been her husband and she his wife all the same, and both of them had been glad too to be so.

No matter how much her heavy heart ached, Sara was just as glad of it now.

It may have only been a few months now, she and Grissom together again, but Sara couldn't even begin to fathom a life lived without him anymore.

Heavy head bowed, she sank against the wall. Perhaps if she closed her eyes she could pretend, if only for a moment, that she wasn't standing outside Desert Palms waiting for her husband to wake.

Oh how Sara longed to be back on the boat with the sureness of the sea beneath her feet. Or nearly anywhere in the world with him but here.

Staring at her shoes, she caught sight of the suddenly spark of white from of the corner of her eye. A single dandelion inflorescence cheerily bobbed in the slight breeze, its feathered wisps reaching skyward.

At this, Sara smiled sadly.

It really was strange the things you remembered and the things you don't.

Only the week before, she and Grissom, both feeling a bit guilty for all their all too frequent eviction of Hank from the bed, had taken the boxer out for an extra long walk out to San Francisco's Yerba Buena Gardens.

All three intent as they'd been on soaking up as much of the November sun as possible, they had settled on an empty expanse amongst the perfectly groomed grass.

While Hank merely plopped down with little fanfare or fuss, his two humans were a bit more careful. Ever methodically they checked the spot for sticks, rocks or bugs, a habit neither had entirely gotten out of after all their time in Costa Rica.

At least the park wasn't like Paris where too many Parisians had the unpleasant habit of not picking up after their pets.

Ultimately finding the spot satisfactory, they settled into the grass.

"You have a visitor," Sara observed after a while, indicating the little ladybug wandering along the back of her husband's hand.

Grissom eased his hand over, taking in the tiny creature as it crawled across his palm. He was just about to nudge it onto the sunny head of a nearby dandelion when his wife's next words caught him up short.

"Don't forget to make a wish," she said.

"What?" he asked askance.

"Didn't you know you're supposed to make a wish before you let a ladybug go?" Sara said as it if were obvious, which apparently it wasn't.

When he continued to look askance, she laughed. "Don't tell me there's actually something about insects you don't know?"

When Grissom didn't deign to answer this she said, "Or are you too scientific for wishes?"

He seemed to consider this for a while. "No, just don't need any," he eventually replied.

"There has to be something you want," insisted Sara.

He shook his head; said, "I have you."

Sara couldn't help but grin at this. Grissom had said as much before, she knew, but it was still good to hear.

Him extending his finger to her, the ladybug lumbered across utterly unconcerned. Sara set it down on the bright flower head.

"I'm good, too."

The two of them watched the _Coccinella_ wander about. Grissom was about to say something about ladybugs not being true bugs at all, but rather minute beetles, when Sara sighed, seemingly apropos of nothing, "Dandelions are highly underrated."

 _By humans certainly_ , Grissom mused in private agreement.

Insects knew better. Honeybees adored dandelions, particularly early in the flowering season when most of the plant world as yet remained dormant. The appeal wasn't all that surprising considering the flower heads were high in pollen, hence their subtle honey-like taste when eaten.

"Everyone thinks a dandelion is a single flower, but it's not. Instead, each dandelion head is made up of many smaller florets grouped together," Sara was saying, casting the lone flower an approving look. "They're a lot easier to spot once they mature into seed heads.

"Which are also good for wishes," she added with a smile.

"If they weren't so photosensitive I'd offer to bring you some home, seeing as you're so fond," Grissom offered with a grin of his own. "But they'd probably barely last the day.

"Found that out the hard way once when I once picked some for my mother."

Sara chuckled at this, trying to imagine a pint sized Gil Grissom clutching a makeshift bouquet of bright yellow flowers.

While the thought was endearing as hell, that didn't keep her from asking, "What did you do?"

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"As in what did you do to necessitate having to bring your mother flowers?"

"I was five," her husband protested. "What kind of trouble could I have gotten into?"

"Knowing you: plenty."

She'd heard stories after all.

Grissom ignored this.

"Turns out she didn't share you fondness for _weeds_ as she insisted on calling them," Grissom explained. "No matter how many times my father tried telling her that a weed was nothing more than a misplaced flower."

"I take it she didn't agree with Emerson then."

Unsure precisely what she meant by this, Grissom shot her a curious look.

To which Sara sagely quoted, "'And what is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered,'" in reply.

"Although dandelions have plenty of those," she offered equally knowingly. "They're fully edible, flower to roots. High in vitamins and minerals.

"Famous for it since Pliny the Elder's time. Both Chinese and Arab doctors use them as medicine. The Anglo-Saxons made dandelions into health tonics. Passengers aboard the Mayflower intentionally brought the plant with them to grow for medicinal purposes.

"Of course these days people tend to treat them more as food than medicine.

"Now it's mostly dandelion wine, though you can find dandelion beer, dandelion root coffee, even dandelion ice cream."

"The royalty of weeds indeed," Grissom agreed.

Then his eyes took on that mischievous twinkle of his.

"Plus," he added, "they're musical."

It was Sara's turn to gape.

"Are you telling me there is something about dandelions _you_ don't know?" he asked, amused at being able to turn the tables on her particularly after that insect comment of hers.

"Prove it," she insisted.

Upon withdrawing his penknife from a pocket, Grissom plucked the dandelion and proceeded to lop off the head before poking tiny holes in the remaining scape.

Putting the stem to his lips, he blew.

Nothing.

He blew again.

Still nothing.

"Well?" Sara couldn't help but smirk.

Grissom gave his makeshift flute a bewildered look.

"Okay, that was supposed to work," he said looking rather unusually confounded.

"Uh huh."

"I read it in a book once..."

"I think this may be one of those times when real life experiences trump book learning, _Gilbert_ ," Sara teased.

There certainly had been plenty of those with her Grissom had to admit.

At the sudden sour face he was giving her, Sara asked, "What?"

"The sap tastes awful," he admitted however reluctantly.

She laughed, then finally gave into the impulse she'd been trying to control for the last few minutes: she kissed him - sap and all - anyway.

Hank, who had been previously pleasantly dosing, roused at this and proved equally intent on sharing in all the attention.

The boxer adequately feted and petted, they relaxed into the grass, Sara ultimately opting to snuggle into her husband's chest. Peering up into the prettily clouded sky, Grissom traced abstract shapes along his wife's back.

They were both lost in their own thoughts for a while until he uttered, "A loveliness of ladybugs."

"A what?"

"It's what you call a congregation of ladybugs."

"A _loveliness_?"

"Yeah."

"And they say scientists can never be poets," Sara sighed appreciatively. "But then I don't see why not. After all beauty is in the brain of the beholder."

"And 'beauty is truth, truth, beauty, - that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know,'" Grissom rejoined by way of reply.

Then running his fingers along the loose ponytail Sara had fastened just above the nape of her neck, he murmured, "Speaking of beauty -"

"I thought it apropos." Sara said, indicating the park, the city. "All things considered.

"Though I am surprised you noticed."

"I noticed. Just like the first time.

"I just never had you pegged as a sentimentalist, my dear."

Sara smirked. "You're one to talk."

xxxxxxx

Slowly returning from her reverie, memories being far easier to handle than reality at the moment, Sara stared at the lone puffball the Desert Palms landscapers had somehow managed to miss, thinking it a flower full of wishes.

Right now, Sara had only one.

When a light touch to her arm brought her back to the full force of the moment Sara had to wonder how long Betty Grissom had stood there beside her without her noticing.

 _Come eat,_ her mother-in-law insisted.

Wordlessly, Sara went.

As she wended her way back through the empty indoor tables, she snagged a discarded copy of the _Las Vegas Sun_.

 _Crossword,_ Sara signed by way of explanation.

 _His father was just the same_ , came Betty's unexpected reply.

 _Like father like son_ , Sara thought, but did not say. Apparently, puzzles proved the Grissom family cure for idleness.

When Betty told her she rather preferred the jumbles herself, Sara replied, _Me, too_.

Plainly their love of the man still asleep upstairs was not their only thing in common.

Sara extended the paper to Betty, who shook her head, insisting Sara needed the distraction far more than she did.

Sara considered her mother-in-law for a long moment. If anyone understood loss, Betty did. She'd lost her hearing when she was just a girl. Though Sara supposed Betty didn't regard it that way: a loss, but rather more difference than diminishment. But the elder Mrs. Grissom had lost her husband nearly fifty years ago now. Ultimately, she'd been a widow for far many more years than she had been a wife. Nor had she ever remarried.

 _You still miss him_ , Sara signed. It wasn't really a question.

Betty gave her a soft smile as she answered anyway, _Every day._

Sara understood. She had felt much the same all the days and weeks and months and years she and Grissom had been apart. Sara just wasn't so sure she was ready to handle having to miss him for the rest of her life.

 _Don't look so sad_ , Betty reassured her. _It's not always a bad thing: missing. You only miss what you treasure most_.

"The tragedy of loss is not that we grieve, but that we cease to grieve and then perhaps the dead are dead at last," Sara had once read in one of her many crime books.

Part of her wanted to ask how she did it; how Betty had managed to live a life so long without the person she loved. How she made it passed all those nights spent having to sleep apart.

But Sara swiftly reconsidered asking, not because she feared Betty's answers, but because she feared having all too soon to discover them firsthand herself.

 _Here._ Betty steered her to an unobtrusive table in the far corner of the dinning room.

 _They didn't have much of a selection. But it is vegetarian_ , she assured her. _Don't worry._ Then considering she added, _You are still vegetarian, aren't you?_

 _Yes,_ Sara signed, surprised Betty had recalled this particular fact. _Gil, too, most of the time_.

 _Insects are considered vegetarian?_ Betty asked genuinely curious.

Which was a fair question, Sara thought, as Grissom certainly hadn't given up his occasional ants on eggs or chocolate covered crickets. Or in attempting to persuade his ever dubious wife of the various virtues of entomophagy.

"Two billion people can't be wrong," he'd told her more than once.

To which Sara had thought _Of_ _course they can_. Billions of people were wrong about all sorts of things. Insect eating just happened to be one of them.

 _Technically we're pescatarian_. Sara finger signed the last word, unsure if there even was an actual sign for it.

 _Fish and seafood are fine. And since shrimp are okay, so are crickets. Both Arthropoda and all._

As Betty was currently wearing the same trying hard not to come off as disgusted look Sara frequently found herself adopting whenever the idea of insect eating came up, Sara thought she probably already knew the answer to her signed, _I take it he didn't eat bugs as a kid_ , still she asked anyway.

Her mother-in-law's expression plainly indicated _Hardly_.

 _He didn't start that up until he was in graduate school._

 _Still have to love him anyway,_ said Sara.

 _Yes, bugs and all,_ Betty agreed. _He always was chasing after them._

 _He still does,_ Sara said _. When back on land at least._

 _Go on and eat,_ Betty insisted. _Before it gets cold._

It wasn't until then that Sara took in the food before her: a carton of milk, a bowl of tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich.

Sara nearly sobbed at the sight, nearly the exact meal Grissom had been planning on making; nearly the same meal he'd presented her with their first night together aboard the _Ishmael_.

Only Betty wasn't to know that.

Bewildered, yet concerned at Sara's obvious distress, Betty hastily offered before reaching for the tray, _I can get you something else_.

"No," Sara said again momentarily forgetting to sign.

Then recollecting herself, she forced a smile and signed, _It's okay,_ before giving Betty a sincere _Thank you_.

It was okay - the food was fine - more than fine.

It was the company Sara was sorely lacking.

Not that Betty was bad company. Sara was genuinely fond of her mother-in-law, still intimidated as hell at times, but genuinely fond.

Tonight, Sara had found her presence oddly reassuring. She certainly was starting to see where the near infamous Grissom placid stoicism came from.

Sara supposed in a sick and certainly twisted sort of way, she at least had kept her dinner date with Betty. Even told her the good news. Only just without Grissom.

She sorely hoped this didn't presage the rest of her life to come.

As she slowly slurped and chewed her way through her meal, Sara found herself unable to keep her thoughts from returning to that first night onboard the _Ishmael_.

xxxxxxx

A/N: I will admit to trying Grissom's little dandelion instrument making endeavor myself, having also read of its possibility in a book.

While curiosity in this case may not have killed, it did indeed taste awful and the stem remained, alas, woefully tuneless.

Perhaps someone else will have better luck in their attempts.


	24. Twenty-four: Warming up

**Twenty-four: Warming Up**

Sara had been the one shivering then.

Snuggled comfortably close, the nearness particularly nice after too, too long a time apart, with her nestled with her arm threaded through his, her head frequently resting on his shoulder as she had been for the last few hours, there really was no way Gil Grissom could have not noticed. Though he knew equally well Sara wasn't about to admit it.

Nor did he need to glance down at his watch to know it was late. The last blush of day had long given way to night. Although all around them, the sunny side of the near full moon silvered everything a brilliant bright.

The ship and the sea began to still as he eased down the throttle.

After the perpetual rush of wind and crash of waves, the world suddenly seemed strangely silent. Just the lapping of the water and for Sara, her still thumping heart.

While she'd relished the speed and the feel of the air in her hair, the cool damp a blissful respite from all the dry heat of Nevada, something, or rather someone, else entirely was the one rendering her a bit breathless.

Not that she was about to complain. For the first time in a very long time, Sara Sidle had begun to breathe again.

For two creatures as well acquainted with the night as Grissom and Sara were, there was just something about the hours after dark.

All the years of working the graveyard shift together probably had had something to do with it. Even with all of Vegas' nonstop frenetic pace, even there, even then, the time had still managed to carry with it a measure of peace, of moments all their own, unshared with all the rest of the world.

Tonight, their first night both back together again and aboard the boat, out and about on the open ocean, it felt as if they had the great expanse of sea and sky all to themselves.

"I'd ask if we were there yet only -" Sara quipped once the ship came to a complete stop and Grissom proceeded to shut off the last of the running lights.

"Never ask stupid questions?" Grissom shared the tease and the grin.

Of course all night they hadn't been able to keep from sappily smiling at each other.

Where here was exactly, Sara certainly had no clue. Having long headed west, they had long left land behind them.

Nor in truth, did she really care. She was here. He was here. At that moment, that was all that mattered.

"Good place for stargazing in any case," she observed as her eyes slowly became accustomed to the dark.

And it was. Despite the moon, the sky shone full on stars, the vast universe on display about them.

Drinking it all in, she stood there gaping, not all unlike the way she had when the two of them had gone star searching in Costa Rica. Only the sight proved even better tonight.

With no trees to obstruct the view and California's blinding city lights not even a distant pinprick on the horizon, there was only the moon and the stars and the sea as far as the eye could see.

Sara couldn't remember the last time since then that the sky had been far more alive than dark. Admittedly, it had been years now since she'd even taken the time to glance skyward.

Yes, human beings really had done themselves a disservice when they had turned off all the stars, as Grissom had not infrequently maintained.

Neon had nothing on the constellations. Or the Milky Way, which at the moment seemed to blaze as if itself alight.

But it was a night in Vegas she was thinking of when she added, "Stargazing - Amongst other things."

This comment earned her the slight quirk of an eyebrow as well as the ghost of a grin. Oblivious as Gil Grissom frequently proved, the innuendo wasn't lost on him.

But before he could tease her in return, Sara's voice turned awestruck. "It's... It's almost like you can reach out and touch them," she murmured appreciatively.

Sure, she'd been out on the ocean at night during her time aboard the _Sea Shepherd_ , but part of her had been far too heartbroken then to give the sky much mind, or at least not enough to appreciate it properly.

Out here with him now -

She wasn't the only one presently feeling a bit overwhelmed.

"They - They look so still and calm, don't they?" Grissom asked, indicating the stars.

"You wouldn't know from here that they were all nuclear chaos.

"Busy dying, busy being born. Young stars, old stars, supernovas, black holes. All of them events long passed. Some even before the earth was ever formed.

"Time really does seem an entirely different proposition from their point of view."

At the tinge of regret plainly add lie amidst his explication, Sara gave his arm a reassuring squeeze.

"They're still beautiful."

Grissom readily agreed. "Some things really are breathtaking no matter how many times you've seen them."

Sara certainly was. Her tresses wild and windblown, her dark eyes bright in the night light and with that smile that had all too often turned his heart - and life - upside down, he found couldn't take his eyes off her for long.

Yet somehow he always seemed to forget just how beautiful she was. No wonder Sara so often left him a little speechless.

Here, here and now with her, Bayard Taylor's words came to mind:

"I love thee, I love but thee,

with a love that shall not die

till the sun grows cold,

and the stars grow old..."

Only however true, he couldn't quite manage to summon enough courage to utter them aloud to her.

He was kept from berating himself with the usual litany: _moron, coward and a fool_ by Sara saying softly, "I can see the appeal."

For it all certainly felt far more real than all of Vegas' garish artificiality.

Though he still only had eyes for her, he said, "It has its uses.

"After all, 'Meditation and water are wedded forever.'"

Sara smirked; apparently Grissom had traded Thoreau's pumpkin for Melville's seafaring when the world got to be a bit too much these days.

As if reading her mind, he added, "It does give you a lot of time to think."

"About 'life, the universe and everything'?" Sara asked, echoing an old Douglas Adams joke of theirs.

It felt good to trade quotations again. As if things were slowly righting their way back to normal.

"Or is it sharks, fishes and whales these days, Gil?"

The briefest of smiles tugged at his lips before he said serious again, "Me - you - us -"

"And?" she asked utterly unsure of the answer.

Again, Grissom opted for honesty. "I never got past seeing you again."

At least that explained his perpetual speechlessness.

Of course neither really had Sara.

Perhaps that was why it had still come as so much a surprise, that first moment she saw him standing there in the lab hallway looking a lot more lost than she had ever seen him look in that space before.

Not that she hadn't known he'd be there; Ecklie had informed her of as much.

Still -

"It suits you," Sara said after a while. "The ocean. The boat."

And Sara's hand found his; fingers threaded, palms pressed snug, safe, albeit a little cold, against his own.

Grissom supposed she had a point. He'd easily taken to the sea, the place mankind knew even less about than the stars above.

Even now, so many mysteries, so many questions, remained.

And Gil Grissom always had been good at questions.

No wonder looking for things, analyzing them, trying to figure out that world had once again become his life.

The thing was for all their near infinite diversity of life, the oceans were equally in their expanses far more empty spaces than not. Not all that unlike that half-lived life he'd attempted to live without Sara by his side.

"'Solitude is a sublime mistress, but an intolerable wife,'" he countered quietly.

When Sara hazarded a glance as if to ask _And me?_ Grissom replied, his voice rife with remorse, "I should have never let you go."

It was Sara's turn not to know what to say to that.

Grissom gave her a doleful half smile before giving her hand a squeeze. "I... I should get you inside. Your... Your hands are like ice."

"You're one to talk," she laughed. "And I'm -"

"You're not _fine_ ," he finished. "You've been shivering for the last ten minutes.

"Besides, it's late and I should probably feed you."

Before Sara could offer up any further protest, he added a bit awkwardly, "And then I... I thought we... we could... talk -"

As exhilarating as the ride out had been, apart from half-shouted questions and replies, with the wind frequently swallowing their words, boating wasn't the most conducive to carrying on any real sort of substantive conversation.

"Finally catch up as we... we didn't exactly get much of a chance the last time -"

Sara had to admit the truth in this.

While Grissom may have returned to spend that final Christmas back in Vegas with his wife all those years ago, with all the typical attendant holiday madness, Sara kept getting called in so that in the end, they hadn't had more than a handful of hours together and far too little time to talk, regardless of all their good intentions.

Like he'd said, so much for that well-meant little bottle of ketchup.

Even before the divorce, that had been what Sara had most wanted for them: to talk. For them to share their lives again, even if they had to be lived thousands of miles apart.

After all, he'd been her best friend, too, and Sara had certainly missed her best friend.

Sure, they had great sex, she hadn't exaggerated when she'd admitted as much to Catherine as much all those years ago, but it was the intimacy, the emotional closeness, she treasured most, felt the loss of deepest when their life together proved over.

The not talking really had been the worst of it.

So being able to talk now - Sara really hadn't smiled this much in ages nor felt so light and hopeful.

She had missed him. Missed them. Missed this. Wanted desperately to talk. Desperately wanted things to be different.

Turns out she hadn't been the only one.

No, she was certainly not about to squander this opportunity.

It didn't matter that it was almost three years overdue; that Grissom so pointedly wanted to talk now made her still bruised and battered heart mend a little more.

"I'd... I'd like that," she finally stammered.

"So, no poacher patrol?" Sara asked as she took his proffered hand and help over the back of the flybridge seats.

Although once well out of the harbor, they had yet to run into any sign of any other ships passing in the night. Sara figured they probably hadn't been looking all that hard.

"Not tonight, dear."

Sara beamed at the endearment.

Despite the water's current calmness, Grissom insisted on preceding her to the main deck.

As she descended the handful of rungs, Sara felt his hand hovering along the small of her back, there to steady her, just in case. She rather treasured the touch: at once tender, protective and slightly possessive as it was.

Both feet finally firmly back on the deck, Sara turned, only to find Grissom hadn't quite retreated far enough. Their bodies brushed close, so very close.

With barely a breath between them, each barely breathed.

Neither retreated. They simply stood staring. Of course they'd been doing an awful lot of that all night, too.

Sara gave several windblown curls a tentative tuck behind one ear; Grissom had begun to gnaw equally nervously on his lower lip once again.

Sure, Sara had spent the last few hours snuggled into his side, yet this seemed far, far nearer.

Near enough to kiss, they both seemed to realize in the exact same moment.

All either one would have to do was lean in just a few inches more and -

Heart hammering in his chest, Grissom recalled being close like this once years ago and he hadn't dared dare then.

Tonight, he dared.

His kiss came quiet, curious as a question. One to which Sara readily replied in kind, her momentary wide-eyed surprise immediately giving way to delight.

Her arms closing about his neck, she stood tiptoe tall to further deepen - and lengthen - the kiss into blissful breathlessness. His hands along her lower back clutched her close in return. They settled easy into each other, so easy.

For Grissom found her lips as warm and welcoming as always, the taste of her tonight tinged with salt from all the spray and he knew there was nothing, nothing in the world like kissing her.

Oh no, a kiss was never just a kiss with Sara.

As for Sara, what little of her mind left functioning at the moment, sighed, _God, could that man kiss_.

Sara could feel it - and him - heart and soul, all the way down to her toes.

For them both it was like coming home.

Unsurprising this really, as it had been very much the same the first time, their first kiss, back in Sara's kitchen more than a decade before. Only this time, Grissom had a far greater grasp on what _home_ truly meant.

Still so much he wanted - still needed - to tell her, however still lacking the words, he tried to pour it all into his next kiss and the third, hoping against hope that although she might not hear his heart, she might feel it.

No wonder by the time they finally broke apart, they both really were breathless.

Their heads resting against one another, they breathed each other in for a while.

"Gil -" she softly sighed.

Her thumb absently caressed his cheek. His eyes brightened; lips twitched at the contact, electric as always.

After a moment, and before he could help himself, Grissom gave her a rather shy smile as he bashfully confessed, "I... I wanted to do that, too."

It really had been hard not to kiss her the first moment he saw her back in the lab hallway. He'd wanted to kiss her, too, as she stood there stammering out in front of Heather Kessler's house, even as nervously going on as she was, only to find that all he could do then was say she _left him a little speechless_. And then when she had showed up on the dock today -

What else could Sara do?

She kissed him and once more they melted into each other.

This time when she shivered, it wasn't from the cold.

And in the end, the night proved Sara right. The place was definitely good for more than just stargazing.

The two of them still beaming at each other, Grissom gathered up her hands, attempting first to breathe, then rub warmth, into her fingers with his own.

"We really do need to get you warmed up," he laughed.

Neither said, but both thought: _Those kisses had certainly been a good start_.


	25. Twenty-five: Objects in the Rearview

**Twenty-five: Objects in the Rear View Mirror**

"I'd offer to give you the nickel tour," Grissom proposed as he led the way down the narrow steps to below deck, "but -"

"It's not worth the nickel?"

"Not really." He gave her a self-deprecating shrug. "It's not much. But -"

"It's home," Sara finished.

"It is now," he replied, his gaze warm and intent on her as he said it.

For her part, Sara peered around surprised that she hadn't noticed it sooner.

Sensing her sudden disquiet Grissom asked, "What is it?"

"I... I thought Hank would be with you..." Then as if the thought had just occurred to her, she paled; gulped. "He's - He didn't - He's not -"

Grissom rushed to reassure her. "No - No. He's... He's fine. A little slower these days. A _lot_ slower these days," he corrected himself.

And that was saying something. Hank hadn't been the most energetic of dogs on the best of days, at least not as long as Grissom had known him.

How old the boxer had been when Grissom had brought him home from animal rescue, no one knew. Even the most conservative estimate put him at about eighty in human years. No wonder he was running slower and sleeping far more as of late.

"Who isn't?" asked a much relieved Sara.

"Still at the sitter's. I wasn't sure when I'd be back," Grissom said by way of explanation. "When I got in and saw the time, I thought it best not to interrupt his afternoon nap."

Sara nodded, knowing as she did that the dog's siestas bordered on sacrosanct.

Though that hadn't really been the reason.

It was simple really: Grissom couldn't face Hank, not with the scent of Sara still fresh on him. He couldn't endure the well-deserved baleful reproachful glares the dog would give him. Or the boxer's disappointment. Not when his own was so achingly fresh.

A fact, he'd known all too well then he could blame no one but himself for.

After Sara's abrupt good-bye in the lab hallway, the full extent of Gil Grissom's plans had amounted to his going back to his boat and the getting back to the half life he'd been living without her.

Despite that being the very last thing he wanted to do.

Yes, he would get back on his boat and miss her - as he always did - as he always would.

So without bothering to say farewell to anyone, he'd gathered up his things, taken a cab to the airport and caught the first available flight out.

Despite the loquacious screenwriter sitting beside him, he'd been quiet the entire journey back, busy lost in his own failure, disappointment - and heartbreak.

It was better this way, of this he was certain. It had to be. There no longer was any other way. He'd been the one to make sure of that.

Grissom had long thought of the divorce not as letting Sara go, but letting her have a chance at real happiness. Something he certainly hadn't been able to give her. But in sending those divorce papers, he'd closed a door, too, on any hopes of a future with her.

No wonder he wanted the sea and the sky and solitude.

Perhaps they would help clear his head, even if they could do little to ease his heartache. Work was good. Work kept him busy. Work was how he had managed to survive the past few years. And now work would be how he survived the rest of his life. He would chase his questions as he always had.

Only he'd never gotten used to it, that life lived without Sara Sidle beside him. Not really. He just did it. Made his way through the day or the night. Tried to sleep in what frequently felt a far too big a bed. Then started it all over again, all the routine motions of the day.

He would settle into whatever it took to fill the endless hours of endless days without Sara to lighten, brighten and Technicolor it.

For Grissom knew all too well that there was no point in wishing for that which could not be changed.

 _What's gone, and what's past help, should be past grief_ , Shakespeare had once written.

Only it wasn't. Returning to San Diego left Grissom bereft like he hadn't been before.

He certainly hadn't felt relieved to make it back to his boat. Resigned, yes, relieved, no. Grissom supposed it would never be entirely over for him: loving Sara.

He really would miss her for the rest of his life.

So he had gone straight back to the boat, set about preparing it to go out that night. All the regular routine. All the things he'd attempted to do while not thinking about her. All as if he hadn't just left. Hadn't just had the pleasure of spending those too too short hours with Sara. As if he hadn't heard her tell him good-bye in that hard, horribly final sort of way.

No, Grissom couldn't have faced Hank's disappointment, not on top of his own.

If he left Hank at the sitter's for a few more days, then maybe, just maybe, he wouldn't still smell of Sara when he finally stopped by to pick him up.

After all, it had been hard enough telling his mother.

xxxxxxx

Grissom had been sitting at a table outside of airport security, not quite ready to step through that particular door just yet. The notebook Catherine had caught him sketching in outside the lab open in front of him, he just drew, penciling in Sara as she had been only the afternoon before, sitting there in that camp chair all decked out in her beekeeping gear.

Admittedly, it had been awkward that moment. Only minutes previous, it had felt like old times again, the way it had before he had gone and royally fucked everything up with his misguided attempts at being noble.

Moronic, foolish and cowardly really was far more like.

At the time, Sara's earlier offer of help had felt like an olive branch of sorts, a momentary thaw in the chill, a detente.

Grissom had meant it, too, what he'd told her. He had missed working side by side with her - way more than the bees.

Not that he could have told her that then.

Or ever apparently.

Yes, it had proven easy, so easy that afternoon up on Mount Charleston to slip back into the comfort of their old working habits.

Only once that work was done, sadly nothing but an uneasy quiet remained.

Still, he wanted to remember that day, remember her sitting there so close all he would have had to do was reach out a hand and -

What?

He didn't know now any more than he had then.

Heck, he still couldn't seem to heave his heart into his mouth.

So much for Sara's oft-repeated assertion: _When words are scarce, they're seldom spent in vain._

As Grissom continue to sketch, he recalled her inscription to another book, much like this one, one Sara had given him years ago.

There in her best attempt at neat chicken scratch she had written: _Always remember it is of possibilities and not absence that blank pages speak._ At the moment these words didn't seem to quite ring true either.

Grissom supposed that was the blessing - and curse - of having an eidetic memory. He could recall every detail with agonizing clarity: every smile, every laugh, every tear, every hurt word.

The first time it buzzed, he ignored his phone, but when it sounded a second time, he reluctantly drew it from his jacket.

 _Were you planning on leaving town without seeing your mother?_ read his latest text message.

Grissom didn't know how his mother always knew it, but somehow she usually did know when he was in town. Perhaps Dave Hodges had something to do with it, but Grissom never could or ever be bothered to find out.

While in truth the answer to his mother's question was indeed yes, Grissom wasn't about to admit it.

Still smarting from earlier and feeling more tired than he had in years, all he wanted to do was sit at his table and try to work out a way to put it all behind him, however futile that pursuit might prove.

Instead, _Case just closed_ , he texted in return. _At airport now._

 _What time's your flight?_

 _Three hours._

 _Coffee Starbucks Esplanade._

His mother's message wasn't a question.

Thinking the exchange over, Grissom was about to pocket his phone and pack up to get ready to meet her when _I take it you saw Sara_ appeared on his screen.

 _Yeah,_ he typed.

Then thinking he might as well just admit it, he added: _Too little too late._

Or perhaps more precisely just too late.

And Grissom still hadn't managed to figure out what to do about any of it.

He'd had his last chance. And what had he done with it exactly? Spent most of it stunned into silence.

His mother was right, when it came to Sara, he really was _a moron, a coward and a fool_.

Although Ecklie's summons had done one good thing. It had finally given him an excuse to return to Vegas when he hadn't been able to summon the courage to do it on his own.

And it had been good to see Sara, beyond good to see her again.

Had it really been nearly three years since he'd seen her last?

It had, the rational part of him reasoned. And yet somehow he had no clue where the time had gone or why in some ways it felt even longer.

Standing there, seeing her again, he had known in that moment he should never have taken nearly so long to come back. He should have come back sooner. He should have come back for her.

Only somehow over the years the road home had stretched and stretched and stretched until Grissom found he could no longer find his way back where he belonged.

 _Mistake,_ Grissom thought. It had been a mistake to stay away. A mistake to have let his work get in the way. A mistake to let Sara go so easily. A mistake not to have fought tooth and nail for her.

So many mistakes. Too many mistakes and misreadings and misapprehensions.

He would have thought the divorce and all the time away would have diminished, if not at least dampened, all the rush of feelings.

It hadn't.

Of course all his words having shied away, they were of no help to him at all. And all the gestures Grissom once could have made use of convey whatever he somehow couldn't say - a look, a smile, a kiss, a caress - were definitely off limits now.

Admittedly, it had been hard, too. So hard just to stand there unable to do anything but stare. Naturally, there had been no hug, no kiss between them. No greeting beyond the most basic of hellos, not even that really.

He'd turned to find her standing there and why not? She was supposed to be there after all. He was the stranger in a seemingly strange land now.

At the sudden sight of Sara, Gil Grissom had been honestly impressed that he'd even managed to get out the two syllables of her name out properly.

But then he'd blown it with his not quite easy, yet utterly obvious: _I'm back_.

He'd never felt - nor sounded - more stupid in his life. And he knew it. Perhaps it had been a good thing Conrad had chosen that moment to interrupt.

Yet Grissom found he couldn't take his eyes off her, no matter how much his heart had ached at the sight of his wife - his _ex-wife_ , he'd had to remind himself - of Sara, but not his Sara, not any more.

This cool and aloof Sara wasn't the Sara he knew so well; his Sara was warm and bright.

Only Grissom had managed to lose that Sara between the miles, the silence and the divorce he'd been the idiot to asked for.

He didn't have the least clue how to get his Sara back no matter how desperately he may have wanted to.

Even before the divorce, Grissom hadn't known what to do about the great gulf that had grown up between them. Not with her hundreds or thousands of miles away. Nor with her practically within arm's-length.

Sadly, the later proved just as hard and fast a distance. Those two feet might as well have been two thousand miles.

Somehow they had become the greatest of strangers.

Grissom really had wanted to do something - _anything_. But it was, he knew all too well, too late. He'd been too late, just as Sara had once warned him he would be.

He supposed it could have been worse. It could have proven like Lord Byron's post parting poem:

If I should meet thee

After long years,

How should I greet thee?-

With silence and tears.

Well, there had been silence.

That and a million questions. At least for him.

When Sara had first shown up in Vegas sixteen years before, he'd readily confessed that he had so many unanswered questions. Fast forward to a far different here and now and he still did. Probably even more. Questions he hadn't even thought to ask then.

 _How are you?_

 _Have you been sleeping?_

 _Are you seeing someone now?_

Sure, there had been no ring on her finger, but she could be with someone else. It had been nearly three years after all. And wasn't that why he had let her go, so that Sara might have a chance at the life she deserved?

He certainly couldn't - wouldn't - begrudge her that happiness.

Not that any of it was any of his business in any case.

Not could he have asked. Not about that, nor anything else. There just weren't the words - _any words_ \- at all. Words failed him as they had so often - too often done - when it came to her.

No, no one had ever left him speechless the way Sara did.

Quotations didn't count. They wouldn't come either.

It wasn't that he hadn't anything to say to her, but rather far too much. He just hadn't known where or how to begin.

Talk, he knew he should talk to her. His mother had said as much to him time and time again.

And he wanted to. But somehow all his words got lost somewhere between his heart and his mouth.

Even after all these years, he still had a hard time expressing his feelings to her. Regrettably, that hadn't changed.

No wonder that ever since the divorce he'd had the same persistent nightmare: her and him, the two of them trapped on opposite sides of some sort of one-way glass. He could see her, but never reach her, touch her, speak to her.

It had been like that that first afternoon in Vegas.

In the Yukon, on the ride over to Heather Kessler's house, with Sara in the driver's seat beside him, he'd been so lost in his own thoughts and regrets, so lost that he really had thought they had been talking, only to realize that any and all of said conversation had been entirely in his head, like every other conversation he'd had with her over the last several years. Sara was right, he hadn't spoken a single word aloud.

True, too, that they hadn't spoken much since the divorce - or before that for that matter - little more than a handful of emails, business mostly. Sara had informed him she had moved out of their Vegas home. He'd written her about the boat, given her a post office box if any further correspondence needed to be sent. Other than that, Grissom had left out more than he ever said.

He'd made a decision. She had agreed. It was done.

Like Sara said: _Things ended_.

He got that, too.

So ultimately he'd found that all he could do was just stand there outside Heather's door attempting to listen to Sara ramble uncomfortably on, an attempt which had proven all the more difficult as Grissom had discovered himself far too distracted by the fact that however hot and harried Sara might presently appear, she was still breathtakingly beautiful.

No wonder she had left him more than a little speechless.

A reality that had changed little in the hours they'd spent together.

At the end, she'd struck him just as wordless, so that ultimately all he could do was stand there and watch her walk away.

Yes, definitely too little too late.

So completely lost in his own remembrances as he was, it took Grissom a moment to register his mother's reply:

 _Be there in half an hour._

xxxxxxx

Twenty-five minutes later found Grissom sitting at a table outside Starbucks, his eagle-eyed mother sitting across from him.

As usual Betty Grissom found her way straight to the point.

 _How was Sara?_ she asked.

 _Good. She's lab director now._

His mother signed, _You must be proud._

 _I am._

Ecklie's loose canon made lab director. Yes, Grissom was proud, beyond proud of Sara. However little a hand he may have had in it, he was still proud.

But then pride and heartache frequently kept company these days.

Grissom had meant what he'd said to Heather about Sara returning his faith in the human being. She did. Even now.

If anyone had traveled through hell and yet still belonged to heaven, it was her.

Before the promotion, part of him, the reckless, heartsick, irrational part of him had wanted to ask Sara to come back with him. To just leave Vegas behind and return with him to his boat. It was the same part of him that considered walking away from the _Ishmael_ and his _Jacques Cousteau thing_ as Sara had called it and instead staying in Vegas.

Only Ecklie's announcement had put to rest even his most wishful of imaginings. Sara had worked too hard, been through far too much, to walk away from the lab and the directorship now.

In any case, there had been no way in hell that he would have even considered daring to ask her to.

No, he wouldn't ask. Neither could he stay either.

No wonder he'd had a hard time finding something other than good-bye to say.

Only he hadn't said that either. He hadn't said anything at all.

Ultimately, Sara had done all the talking. And the leaving. All he could do was stand there and watch her walk away.

There'd been no good in that last good-bye. But then they never had been all that good at partings.

But, he supposed, at least they had had a proper one this time.

A last one.

Any possibility, even the vaguest of hopes of any sort of reconciliation he could have still possibly clung to, her _Bye, Gil,_ had more than effectively laid to rest.

Never again would he return to Vegas. Nor would Gil Grissom ever see Sara Sidle again. Her farewell had been final. He knew that all too well.

He had done this. Grissom could blame no one but himself. She had shown him a wonderful life, Sara had. Only he'd been the one to take it all away, throw it away on all his damn good intentions.

And Sara was just gone, gone without even a single backwards glance, leaving him alone with his aching heart - and hands.

No, he really hadn't known what to do with his hands.

Not in that moment when he first caught sight of her again. Not in the eternity it took for her to disappear down that hall. Nor during any of the in between.

Only that had been that.

Nothing to do but go back to his boat and to making - or at least attempting to make - a life without her. He'd managed as much before. Thought he'd been managing just fine. It wasn't a bad life after all, just one without her in it.

Until he saw Sara again.

How could he ever have thought it better without her? That anything was better without her?

True, he was living, but he was nowhere near alive.

Somehow he'd once again reverted to being a ghost in his own life.

While Grissom had been away it had been easier, easier to talk himself into his new (but sadly not improved) life. Been easier to convince himself that he'd done the best thing for the both of them.

Sorrow had settled. He'd accepted it.

One could become adapted to unhappiness after all. He'd done it before. He'd do it again. It wasn't okay, but it would have to be.

He just had to keep breathing - doing - living - being - continue on without her, however hard it hurt.

But then as Thoreau had once said, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." Who was he to be fortunate enough to have it any other way?

No matter how much Grissom had genuinely enjoyed their one last time together in Vegas, however awkward it had frequently proved, despite the fact that he knew all along it would be the last, it had still felt in that farewell like he had lost Sara all over again. Even if he knew, too, one couldn't lose what one already no longer possessed.

And yet he'd meant what he'd said to Heather. He was grateful, genuinely grateful. Grateful for the chance to learn to love someone. Grateful that someone had been Sara. Grateful for the life together they had once shared. Grateful all the while knowing he would miss never having her in his life again.

Yes, Vegas was lucky to have her. He'd been lucky like that for a while, though not nearly long enough.

He certainly didn't regret loving her, not for a minute.

Losing her yes, loving her, never.

Only Sara certainly didn't need him any longer. She was managing just fine on her own. Excelling. She'd thrived just as Grissom had wanted her to.

It still hurt though. No longer to belong. No longer to be needed.

If his time back in Vegas had taught him anything, it was that life had gone on without him. Sara had gone on without him.

And it never hurt so much for him to have what he said he had wanted.

Rather ruefully Grissom let himself muse for a moment over how it might have been. If they had still been married they might have gone out - or perhaps have stayed in - to celebrate Sara's promotion. Perhaps then he could have shown her then just how immensely proud of her he was. He could have kissed her, held her, made love to her. Maybe then he could have somehow managed to convey everything his heart was so desperate to say.

But no, he no longer possessed the luxury of that opportunity. Instead, all he could do was stand there vainly applaud her accomplishment.

Sitting there at the Starbucks together, Grissom expected his mother to purse her lips, shake her head in disgust and swiftly sign her usual and perhaps well-warranted refrain that he was _a moron, a coward and a fool -_ whatshe'd been telling him every time Sara came up in conversation ever since he had broken the news of the divorce.

However true the words might be, he wasn't quite sure he could handle hearing them again right now.

His mother didn't need to say them, he already knew. But she would, this he knew, too.

Only she didn't. Betty Grissom simply reached out and after giving her son's hand a reassuring squeeze, replied, _I'm sorry_.

 _Me, too,_ he signed once he'd gotten past his surprise.

Her face fond, but sad, his mother patted his cheek affectionately.

Both resigned to the fact that there was nothing more to be said about the subject, they sipped silently at their drinks for a while before making small talk about far less painful subjects until it was time for Grissom to get cleared through security for his flight.


	26. Twenty-six: Ketchup

**Twenty-six: Ketchup**

Grissom, shaking his head in order to clear it of earlier that day's rather unpleasant recollections, opted instead with Sara here and now aboard the _Ishmael_ to focus on happier things.

"Hank will be ecstatic to see you," he said.

"Yeah, right," Sara scoffed.

"You always were his favorite," Grissom maintained.

"That's only because I used to sneak him treats when you weren't looking."

"I know."

Sara always was a sucker that way.

"And that's not why."

"Plus, I give a better belly rub -" she suggested with a slight snicker.

"Yeah, but no. He's missed you," he said seriously. Grissom hoped she heard the echo of his own _I've missed you_.

"The feeling's mutual." In this, Sara hoped he heard her _I've missed you, too_.

"While it is a little late," Grissom admitted, "I suppose I could catch you something for dinner. Plenty of fish in the sea and all -"

He certainly had the equipment for it. Even her extremely cursory examination had revealed plenty of tackle. Its presence however didn't keep Sara from scoffing, "Yeah, that worked out so well the last time."

Their one and only fly fishing outing together had resulted in both of them ending up soaked and sans fish. Although the subsequent swim _sin ropa_ had more than made up for it.

Each grinned at the reference.

Settling Sara into the small banquette across from the even smaller galley, Grissom retrieved a throw from the back of the cushions and proceeded to wordlessly drape it about her shoulders. Sara snuggled into it, finding the fabric smelled like him and the unscented laundry soap he had favored when working as a CSI.

"Better?" he asked, lingering there with her a little longer.

"Much," she beamed.

Having rather reluctantly retreated into the boat's kitchen, Grissom clattered about.

"Tea?" he asked, hoisting an electric kettle.

"Please."

The pot filled and set to boil, Grissom set about searching through the handful of cabinets.

"There's not a lot of selection," he said by way of apology. "I wasn't exactly expecting company."

"I can always go," shot back Sara.

Though he knew she was only teasing, Grissom insisted, " _Stay_."

"I guess it is a little too far to swim -" she acknowledged. " And cold -"

"Is that all that's keeping you here?" he asked.

"Hardly," Sara replied. _God, it felt good to tease_.

Grissom felt the same, even if it did prove to be at his expense.

The kettle let out a loud whistle. As he poured the steaming liquid into two tea bag bedecked mugs, he offhandedly offered, "The fishing is actually pretty good at night."

"Hence the poachers," said Sara.

Their fingers brushed as he pressed the warm, welcome cup into her hand. Sara sipped appreciatively, smiling at the fact that of course Grissom had made it just the way she like it.

Leaving his own tea to cool on the counter, Grissom resumed his search. Sara had the sneaky suspicion the various Styrofoam cartons she spied on the shelves behind him didn't contain take-out. From the compact fridge he drew out a quart of milk, checked the date and gave it a tentative sniff before ultimately opting against it. He continued to rummage.

"Eureka!" he cried, emerging victorious can in hand. "If you're not up for fish, how about grilled cheese and tomato soup instead?"

"Sounds great."

More than great, really.

Grissom made great grilled cheese, of the sort which had frequently made her swoon. However unsure how he managed it, she knew better than to ask. Sara was far too intent on enjoying seeing him work his culinary magic once again to much care in any case.

"Will just have to improvise a bit," he said setting to work. He pilfered the bread and cheese from the two deli sandwiches he had picked up on his way out of the airport; flipped the mayo so it faced outside. Deftly quartering an apple with his pocketknife, he added the subsequent slices to the cheese; set them all to sizzle on the stovetop.

"Pickle?" he asked.

"Only if you don't electrocute it first."

They were each still softly chuckling when Grissom's phone chose that moment to buzz in his pocket.

This, he thought, was definitely the time to ignore it.

Sara didn't seem to agree. When it went off a second time, she indicated he should check it.

"Go ahead. Get it. It's... It's okay," she assured him. After all, she had come to share his life, not disrupt it.

"You're sure?" he asked hesitantly.

"Yeah."

When Grissom thumbed his latest message open, he had to shake his head. As if his recent recollections of his mother had somehow summoned her into the present, the text was from her.

"Mom," he supplied to Sara. "She... She stopped by to see me at the airport," he said. "How she knew even knew -"

Sara had one guess and his name started with H.

"How is she?" she asked.

"Good," he replied. Then with a sad smile he said, "She asked the same about you."

"Tell her I said hi."

"Yeah."

A fond sort of grin tugged on his lips as he started to type.

 _You get back okay?_ His mother had asked.

 _Yeah just fine._

 _You okay?_

In this Grissom knew his mother didn't mean the question as the usual polite nicety, that there lay real concern behind her words.

 _Very,_ he replied. _Sara's here. She says hi._

The regular to and fro abruptly came to a halt at this.

"What?" Sara asked at Grissom's perplexed expression.

He flipped the phone over to show her.

Still no reply.

 _Wow_ , Sara thought. _First time for everything_.

For she certainly hadn't known the indomitable Mrs. Grissom to be at loss for words in all the time she had known her.

Sara was starting to wonder if perhaps Grissom should write to make sure Betty was okay when the phone indicated his mother had finally begun typing again.

Sara was still shaking her head when she noticed Grissom's face had fallen. Which was the last thing she expected, however gruff, abrupt and impolitic Sara knew her former mother-in-law could prove.

"Gil?" came her concerned query.

When he didn't reply, she rose to stand beside him.

Rather than conceal his mother's response, he tilted the phone the better for her to be able to read: _Good. At least one of you has some sense_.

Well then. Some things didn't change. Betty was Betty, blunt as ever.

How - why - this had so upset him, Sara couldn't fathom. But before she could ask him, another text appeared on screen: _I won't keep you then. Good night both of you_.

Grissom typed a quick, _Night Mom_ , in reply.

"Gil?" Sara prompted when he continued to stare blankly at his phone.

He revived a little at the touch of her hand on his.

"She's right you know," he murmured eventually.

Sara disagreed. "Not that much sense. I... I should have asked you to come back a long time ago."

"Why didn't you -"

"Say anything?" she finished. She gave him a somber smile before repeating his own earlier words with no less honesty, "I didn't know how."

Grissom nodded at this. "And I didn't give you much of an opportunity."

"You know," Sara began, "after that call, when you didn't come home -"

Only she couldn't seem to find the words to finish what she wanted to say.

Not that Grissom needed to remind her that she had been the one who had told him not to. When he hadn't shown up for her birthday, Sara had been spoiling for a fight. Only a one-sided fight was no fight at all. She couldn't fight with a voicemail box. She couldn't fight with a phone that refused to ring. Ultimately, she couldn't fight a divorce decree.

As for him, as the distance had begun to widen ever more between them, Grissom hadn't known what to do about it all. And this time there had been no offer from Sara of help.

So Grissom did what he usually did: nothing.

Which ultimately proved to be the wrong thing. He supposed that in this at least he was consistent.

Thus their life together had slowly, steadily begun to slip away. A few missed calls, a few missed weekends together, somehow soon became too many missed calls, too many missed weekends.

Before he had realized it, they'd stopped speaking on a regular basis. Then stopped speaking much at all, until only the silence stretched between them, turning miles into mountains.

That and for some reason time had the nasty habit of slipping away from him in the field. Things like dates or even days of the week stopped being all that important. Therefore it had proven easy, too easy, to forget arrangements, forget to call, forget important things like birthdays.

Somehow Grissom had managed to forget, too, a fundamental truth that social insects like bees and ants have known for a million millennia: that the essence of social existence was based on reciprocal cooperative communication.

By the time he had realized the extent of the problem, it really had been too little too late.

He'd taken Sara - and their life together - for granted. Thought she'd always be there for him to come home to whenever he managed to get around to it, no matter how far or how long he had wandered. That that was too much to ask of anyone was something he'd only recognized too late.

He'd missed the signs, hadn't known how to interpret the silences that had suddenly begun to spring up between them. Hadn't known what to do about any of it.

Yet again he'd ended up with his head jammed so far down his microscope - or more precisely up his own ass - that he'd missed what his wife had been trying to tell him.

No, he certainly couldn't fault Sara for being hurt or angry.

 _Sometimes not making a decision is making a decision._ Both Heather and Sara had told him as much once.

Only neither he nor Sara had chosen to make a decision, to find a solution to their her here, him there problem, until not making a decision had become their decision.

Grissom, for one, should have known better, should have realized.

But apparently not having learned that lesson the first time, he'd found himself in the midst of repeating it with far, far more damning results.

And just like the last time, Grissom hadn't realized that was precisely what he had done until he'd gotten that terse phone message from Sara, the one he'd known if he was being honest with himself, he'd rightly deserved.

There wasn't an apology, a card, a message, flowers, chocolates or gift in the world to make up for what he had done - and not done. Sara's tone, not to mention her words, had made that abundantly clear.

 _I'm sorry_ just wouldn't cut it this time.

Still, he figured he'd try to work out a way to make it up her, something he'd found himself having to do more and more as of late.

Until then, he'd foolishly taken her at her word.

He'd equally foolishly elected to give her some space, some time, a chance to cool off, to cool down. That's what it sounded like she wanted; needed.

He'd told himself she would call when she was ready to talk again.

Except that call never came.

Of course Grissom could have called.

He'd tried. He'd picked up the phone; set to dial. But not knowing what to say, he never did. He'd been about to text, begun emails; even pulled out pen and paper. Neither his heart nor his head ever got past her name.

Only this, too, had only made things worse.

Neither mentioned the word _divorce_ in the very few, very brief, cold, clipped conversations they eventually did have. However thinking this was what Sara wanted - what she needed - Grissom had gone to visit a lawyer to draw up the divorce papers, assuring himself all the while that this, this he could do. This he could do for her. So he did.

He hadn't even put up a fight.

He'd really been, as his mother had constantly reminded him, _a moron, a coward and a fool._

For her part, Sara had simply returned the divorce papers without comment or line (apart from her terse disagreement over his assertion that she keep the Vegas house); had merely scrawled her initials and signature in the appropriate spaces.

And it was over, far, far faster than it had begun.

Easier and harder, too.

Things ended. They ended.

Without even a proper good-bye. Without any good-bye at all.

Back in the present, after a second steadying breath, Sara launched in with another attempt to say what she'd been so wanting to say.

"Then after the... the divorce," she stammered over the word. "I... I thought I'd never see you again.

"There were times I didn't want to."

While the honesty hurt, Grissom respected it - and her for it.

"I thought... I thought you didn't -" Again her voice trailed off.

Not that Sara needed to finish. He could read the words in her eyes: _love me - need me - want me_. The sight of them nearly made him want to cry.

"No, honey, no. No. God, no."

It was Grissom's turn to struggle to put his heart into words. But he had to for her - for him - for them.

"Sara - you - you were so unhappy all the time. I... I didn't want to be the one making you so unhappy anymore."

He certainly hadn't wanted to hurt her, quite the contrary, and yet he had.

That had been hard, realizing the sad fact that you could love someone and yet manage to hurt them; love them and yet disappoint them; love them and yet break their heart all the same.

"I... I guess I thought... thought it would be better - I... I wanted better for you -"

The right thing he'd reasoned was to let her go if that was what she needed or wanted. He loved her enough to let her go, though he had ached at the doing of it.

Yet again he had opted to do the right thing, however wrong it proved.

Not that Sara could exactly fault him for this. She'd done nearly the exact same thing nearly seven years before: let Grissom go if that was what he needed.

No matter how hard it hurt, how could she hold it against him when he did the same?

And she had been unhappy, so unhappy. Only the divorce hadn't improved that. Nor had it made the missing any less, the needing any less, the loving any less.

"Better than you?" she eventually asked.

His silence was all the confirmation Sara needed.

She had to choke back tears as she said, "You still don't get it, do you? After all this time - everything -"

Her tone suddenly turned quiet, almost tender. "It's you, Gil. It's only ever been you."

Grissom didn't understand how or why, but then he never had, that Sara Sidle had chosen him, wanted him, loved him, needed him, too.

"I just... wanted you to come home. But how could I ask that of you?" she asked. "I mean I was the one who wanted to come back to Vegas. And you supported that. How could I not support whatever it was you wanted to do?"

Damn him and his good intentions, Grissom thought, realizing in that moment that those intentions had been little more than cowardice in disguise.

"Sara, I'm sorry -"

She held up her hand to silence him, neither needing nor wanting an apology.

The time for mea culpas, however heartfelt, was long past. She wanted - needed - to move past regret. For Sara knew she could hold onto the past, the hurt and hard feelings, or she could hold onto him. She chose him.

"I know - me, too," she said. "I guess this makes us both idiots."

"Mom's usual refrain is on the order of _moron, coward_ -"

" _And a fool_ ," Sara finished.

She had heard as much before.

Shrugging, Sara said, "For a smart man, you can be monumentally stupid about some things."

" _Monumentally_?" he echoed.

"World class. Me, too," she admitted.

Then the sorrow in her eyes gave way to an unexpected sparkle. "So," she began a hint of challenge to her tone, "how about we prove your mother wrong?"

Grissom grinned at the prospect.

xxxxxxx

While the canned soup had lacked its usual cream or even milk, it was hot and filling, so were the hastily cobbled together grilled cheeses, albeit a bit more burnt than usual, distracted as they had both been by their discussion.

Neither soup nor sandwich might have made much of a meal, but Grissom and Sara made a feast of it all the same. Though perhaps it was more the company than the food that had made it so.

Strangely, it hadn't felt like their first night back together again after so many years apart.

For the hours passed easy, blissfully easy, as they relished the simple pleasure of the other's presence.

It felt good, so good, sitting together like this, talking, touching, laughing just like old friends again.

Neither quite ready to relinquish the night's earlier near constant contact, their hands edged along the tabletop, fingers brushed, occasionally intertwined.

It was as if after all their time and distance apart, back together again now, they couldn't get enough of the feel of the other beneath their fingertips.

As the night wore on, they finally did catch up, their sentences tripping over one another as they talked and talked and talked like they hadn't in years, about everything and nothing, hard things, sad things, strange things, funny things, all that had happened and hadn't.

Apparently Grissom had grown even quirkier, which as this was Gil Grissom, this was saying something.

Of course the realization of this fact amused and endeared Sara to no end.

Although that didn't keep her from teasing him about it. But then the flirt and tease had always come easy once the two of them had managed to get out of their own way and accept the reality that they loved each other.

Sara found Grissom warmer, more relaxed than she remembered him and a lot more devil may care about some things.

He spoke animatedly of his work on the water. What the nights were like. What mischief he managed to frequently get himself into. Of his adventures and _mis_ adventures, of the oceans and the lives lived beneath them, of his own life not only spent trying to protect them, but also to understand them.

Not mincing words, he didn't make it sound romantic, as some might have done. For it frequently proved tedious, detail oriented work, much of which ended up lacking any positive outcome.

After nearly twenty years as a crime scene investigator, Sara was used to that.

Apparently Sara had pegged it - and him - right. His latest run in with the San Diego Harbor Patrol hadn't been her ex-husband's first run in with law enforcement.

"It's partially your fault," he offered by way of excuse.

Sara laughed. "How do you figure that?"

"It was all those stories of yours from your time aboard the _Sea Shepherd_."

And their time together in Costa Rica, he thought but did not add.

Nor did he tell her that the boat hadn't been some post-divorce, mid-life crisis whim or a just another manifestation of his misanthropic tendencies. That rather it had been his way of keeping close to her even after he'd been the one to push her away.

" _Gil Grissom, rebel with a cause_ ," Sara concluded, her admiration plain amongst the tease. "Who would have thought: you a renegade in your old - _older_ ," she hurriedly corrected herself, "age."

While his lips may have quirked at her comment, in truth, Grissom hadn't really been anything of the sort. Just a man who after the divorce no longer had anything to lose.

He'd already lost what mattered most.

As Ingeborg Bachman had once written, "It was not you I lost, but the world."

Sadly, Grissom understood exactly what the Austrian poet had meant all too well. That he had affected the losing himself had made it all the harder.

Hence how he could simply stand there toe to toe with Dalton Betton: because at that moment, Gil Grissom honestly had nothing of any real value left to lose. Not after he had already managed to lose the only person he'd ever loved, lost Sara, lost her even as she stood there right beside him.

Nothing was scarier than that.

Besides, killing others was easy. Grissom knew Betton was far too much a coward to actually kill himself.

Admittedly though Grissom had gotten a little reckless. He'd been downright sloppy in San Diego, even if that hadn't been the first time he'd gotten caught. Probably wouldn't be the last time either. Ecklie's sudden summons had proved practically providential. Except Grissom knew he couldn't exactly expect Conrad to bail him out on a regular basis.

Grissom, however, didn't bother to correct her on any of this.

It was too good to see her smile; hear her laugh. It had been too long.

Sara felt much the same. She hadn't found herself grinning as much as she had in the last few hours in the past few years. It felt good to laugh and talk and tease and flirt again.

She, in turn, spoke about the lab and her cases. Deciding to gloss over her more dangerous escapades, she stuck to the more bizarre and the occasionally amusing, if frequently bemusing, incidents. So much so that she was left rounding off her latest tale with a chuckle of "I'm telling you, Gil, _stupid_ really should be a valid listing for cause of death."

She counted the possibilities out on her fingers, "Accident, natural causes, murder, suicide, undetermined and stupid, definitely stupid."

But it was her warning as he cleared up their dinner detritus that struck him as strange.

"I'd be careful with that," she said indicating the banana peel in his hand. "Could be deadly."

He shot her a _You have to be joking_ look, to which she replied, "Nope. Had an actual death by banana peel two summers ago.

"Turns out the guy slipped, fell, hit his head and bled out into the brain.

"We couldn't believe it ourselves at the time. Sounded like a bad joke gone wrong.

"But we looked it up, well Hodges did. There was actually a study on banana peel slippage out of Japan of all places.

"Turns out you really can slip on a haphazardly discarded banana peel.

"With a friction coefficient of 0.07, the peels are twice as slippery as ice, five times slipperier than wood. Stepping on any object with a coefficient of less than 0.1 results in a fall 90% of the time.

"Weird but true."

Science, Grissom knew, had the habit of being like that.

Somewhere in the midst of her recitation Grissom's eyes softened into a smile. He couldn't keep his eyes off her. It had been that way in Vegas, too. Only tonight he could look as long as he liked. That proved a nice change.

Neither spoke of their lives beyond work. They didn't need to. Both knew all too well of all the lonely nights and even lonelier days. Nor did either of them really want to further dissect the mistakes of the last few years. The whys and hows of how they had managed to fall apart didn't really matter now. There was no point in arguing over them. And there had been enough coldness and hurt during their last few days in Vegas, though Sara had to admit she'd been the only cold one. Grissom had been awkward, yes, but warm and a bit vulnerable. Sara had just been too hurt to hear or see it.

True, they couldn't get back any of the time they had lost, but they could - and would - make the most of whatever time they could still have.

In any case, the present proved far too precious to waste.

As for the future, of that they spoke equally little. Not because neither knew what might happen, but because they already possessed what they each wanted most: being together again.

The rest was just details.

They'd work things out. Besides, decisions didn't have to be made right then. They had time.

The future would take care of itself, if they'd only let it.

Thus it was long, long passed midnight by the time either gave any notice to the time, them having lost track of the hours in that particularly spectacular way only good company spent in good conversation could provide.

When Grissom apologized for inadvertently keeping her up half the night, Sara only flashed him that secret smile she reserved solely for him.

"Not the first time," she smirked. "Probably won't be the last."

They both looked rather pleased at the possibility.

xxxxxxx

A/N: To read more about the origins of the rather unusual title for this chapter, see the story "Special."


	27. Twenty-seven: Bedtime Stories

**Twenty-seven: Bedtime Stories**

"Still," Grissom insisted, "you have to be tired."

His warm gaze searched her face, taking her in. She was thinner, this was evident, more drawn at the edges. Until she smiled and she became the same Sara he had first met all those years ago at the Forensic Academy Conference in San Francisco.

"You haven't been sleeping," he said, not a question.

It didn't take all of his twenty-five plus years as a CSI to work out that Sara had to be nearly dead on her feet. Nor the nearly eight years they'd been together. He knew, too, Sara would also be the last one to admit it. She was stubborn like that.

She shrugged. "You know Vegas."

"I know you."

When they had first met, she'd been famous - or perhaps infamous - for her ability to stay awake and alert for three days straight. But as that had been years and years ago now, Grissom seriously doubted it came quite as easy these days.

He knew, too, that regardless of how little sleep he'd gotten during his latest however brief jaunt back to Sin City, Sara had likely gotten far, far less.

Sara saw no point in denying it. She hadn't slept much, if at all, over the last few days and nights, hadn't really even tried.

Rabid mad bombers tended to do things like keep you up all hours.

That and the suddenly even more unwelcome prospect of returning home to a half empty bed, particularly after having spent the last few hours in the company of the one with whom she had once happily shared it, hadn't helped either.

After all this time and considering how infrequently she and Grissom had actually shared said bed even before the divorce, Sara thought she would have long stopped regarding it that way, and yet, it still felt that way: half empty without him.

No, she certainly hadn't been in any hurry to head back to her apartment after Ecklie's impromptu press conference announcing her promotion.

Instead, she'd opted to work through the afternoon and into the next shift. Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork. Thankfully, there was always plenty of that. A reality she was for once incredibly grateful for.

Filling out the endless stacks of reports proved infinitely preferable to tossing and turning all afternoon. As keyed up as Sara had still been even then, sleep would have proven futile, she knew.

True, she knew she would have had to face sleep at some point. Particularly now as with her past forty, it proved a whole lot harder to stay up than it had at barely thirty.

Then Lindsey had poked her head in with that tape of Heather Kessler's interrogation, after the viewing of which there had been no thoughts of sleep or home or work - just going.

On the plane, Sara had been too tense to sleep, the flight (only an hour between take off and touch down) far too brief for even a nap, no matter how much experience Sara had gotten over all her years of working Grave and being called in all hours of the day or night, of snatching sleep where and whenever she could.

Then her arrival in San Diego and subsequent seeing Grissom again had managed to erase most of the fatigue she hadn't realized she'd been carrying around. Though part of her had been so tired even then she couldn't have been entirely sure she wasn't already dreaming.

Although honestly her first thought at Grissom's mention of sleep was the fear that perhaps she might simply be too tired to succumb.

Sadly, exhaustion and insomnia made strange, yet not infrequent bedfellows.

Besides, it wasn't like sleep had been all that much of a comfort as of a late.

But with warm food and hot tea in her stomach and quiet contentment coursing through her veins, at present, sleep didn't seem all that much of an impossibility.

So Sara made no protest to Grissom's dogged insistence. Instead, she let him lead her down the short narrow hall. While she momentarily considered taking him up on his proffered shower, she ultimately decided she was too worn out even for that, opting instead to head straight to bed.

"The Master Stateroom," Grissom pronounced opening the door wide. "Not really as grand as it sounds," he added.

Sara soon found he hadn't unnecessarily deprecated the room. It certainly wasn't nearly as spacious as its name suggested. Instead, it proved far more to be a cozy cubby of a space barely big enough to turn around in. A precisely made up full-sized bed atop a set of pull out drawers dominated most of the wall opposite the door, while a built-in wardrobe took up one adjoining side and a fold down desktop and bookshelves the other. Of course it was all neat and tidy, apart from Grissom's typical always in the middle of something work detritus. Some things never changed.

Having already taken her jacket to hang it as well as his own in the closet, Grissom set about finding something for Sara to sleep in.

"I'm sure I've got a shirt you can wear while I put your clothes in the wash. It can get chilly out on the water," he offered by way of explanation.

Sara nodded, though her lips twitched as she recalled all the times he'd halfheartedly bemoaned her habit of appropriating his shirts over the years.

As he continued to rummage about in the cupboard, he said, "Tomorrow, I'll clear out a couple of drawers and some space for you in here."

"No hurry," she laughed. "It's not like I have that much to unpack."

They'd have to remedy that fact tomorrow as well.

Not that Sara didn't look lovely in his shirts.

As for tonight's wear, Sara snagged the black and blue plaid shirt from the top of his as yet not completely unpacked tote.

"This'll do," she insisted.

"It's not -"

Before he could finish with _clean_ , Sara said, "It's perfect."

Neither sure what to do next, they simply stood there for a moment.

When Grissom moved to step out, Sara said, herself both nervous and not, "You are coming to bed, too, right?"

And it was her turn to take him in, her dark eyes intent yet tender.

When she had first spotted him aboard his boat, he'd looked a bit tired and ragged, worn out and worn down by more than just the past few sleepless days. Seeing her may have lightened and brightened him, but the fatigue was still there.

"You haven't been sleeping either," she said softly.

Grissom didn't see the point in denying this anymore than Sara had. He couldn't have protested in any case, as at the moment one of her thumbs was currently engaged in caressing his cheek in that way so intimately familiar to them both. He relaxed into her touch, as calming yet invigorating as it had always been.

There were, however, practicalities to consider. Warily eying the full sized bunk behind her, he hesitated.

Not because he didn't want to, but because he did.

Sara decided to settle the issue for him.

Still a little shyly she said, her voice soft, gentle, warm and inviting, "Come to bed, Gil."

His lips twitched. Only Sara ever said his name like that: long, low, fast as any embrace and as sweet and tender as any endearment.

"Besides," she added a little sheepishly, "I - I always sleep better with you."

He did, too, with her beside him.

He nodded. "I'll be right back. Just give me a few minutes to... to get the boat shut down."

As Grissom disappeared out the door and up the narrow steps, Sara watched him go, the trace of a fond smile of her own still fluttering about her lips. Thankfully, most of the butterflies in her belly had finally stilled.

Certain he was gone, she brought the cotton fabric of his shirt to her nose and inhaled deep the long thought lost comfort of him. It smelled as she knew it would of his clean warmth tinged with a hint of sweat. Just as his clothes and he had when she and he had both lived in Vegas.

Tonight, Sara noticed he smelled like the wind and the sun and sea, a very different sort of scent, yet no less alluring.

Slipping off her shoes, she tucked them out of the way. Setting Grissom's shirt momentarily aside, she undid the clasp of her necklace first, then placed it in an unoccupied space of the room's fold top desk. Her jacket already neatly secreted in the wardrobe, Sara peeled off her shirt, shimmed out of her dark jeans; neatly folded both before draping them over the back of the desk chair.

For a moment, she paused to peruse the narrow bookshelves and smiled to find several familiar titles amongst the prerequisite volumes on oceanography, ichthyology, cetology and entomology. More than a few of them she recognized as having had gifted him them herself: _The Complete Works of Shakespeare_ she'd given him for Christmas years and years ago now; the Melville which had been a nuptial gift.

Having tugged off her socks and wigged out of her ever sensible white cotton underwear, she was in the midst of popping the clasp on her bra when something on the corkboard behind the desk caught her eye.

Brushing the edge of several pinned notes aside revealed the rest of exactly what Sara thought she had seen: that photo of her and Grissom taken in San Francisco not all that long after the two of them had first met.

The print nearly two decades old now, a faint yellowing had joined the even more worn and frayed edges. But then so was she, Sara reasoned, compared to the she of that sunny February day. She could barely begin to imagine herself ever having been that young.

For a long while post divorce, Sara had wondered if she would have warned that younger self of hers of all that she was all too soon about to be getting herself into. Now she knew she wouldn't.

For better or worse, her and Gil Grissom's lives really had become inextricably intertwined ever since the moment they'd first met.

Once Grissom had told her he'd kept the picture for the smile. Sara had taken it as a reminder of happier times. Perhaps both were why he displayed it here.

However touched that he had wanted to keep that smile, the sight of it made her heart ache. Grissom hadn't hidden away all hints of their life together. The books and the presence of the picture proved that.

Not like Sara had tried. And failed.

No, he hadn't attempted to erase her from his life. She was still there, Sara saw, in a dozen different things. None in ostentatious pride of place, but all as if they simply belonged. Evidently Grissom hadn't found her sort of divorce from the past necessary.

Out of sight, out of mind, hadn't worked for Sara; apparently Grissom hadn't even tried.

After Sara had made the decision to move out of the Vegas home she and Grissom had once more technically than actually shared, she had packed up the few things she had wanted to take with her to her new apartment herself and left notes for the movers to box up the rest.

At the time Sara had justified these actions as her being too busy at work to handle it herself. But that hadn't been the real reason. She just couldn't do it, handle the memories and hurt in every object.

Having already spent too much of her life surrounded by ghosts, she hadn't needed Grissom's confronting her wherever she went.

She could have kept the house, the one they had bought together. Grissom had stipulated as much in the divorce papers. That had been the lone provision Sara hadn't agreed to. It having been once their home, she had no interest whatsoever in living there alone. An apartment was easier in any case. Sara certainly didn't need all that space for just herself, not when lately she had begun once again to regard said home merely as a place to shower and sleep and little else.

Thus most of her things had went to and presently continued to remain in storage, the little wooden Tican butterfly puzzle box Grissom had given her the Christmas just before they were married one of the very few exceptions. When the time came, Sara had found she just couldn't quite part with it, or its contents, though not once had she brought it out since she'd first slipped it into the rear corner of her top dresser drawer.

A loud thump abruptly startled her back to the present to find a small black book sprawled open at her feet. Figuring she must have accidentally dislodged it in the course of all of her perusing, Sara bent to retrieve it.

Having fallen pages down, she turned it right side up and proceeded to smooth the ruffled sheets. Idly flipping through the heavy cream-colored pages she took in the handwritten notes, quotes, poems and the unexpectedly beautiful sketches. Obviously, Grissom had further developed his talents while they had been apart.

Unsurprisingly, there were drawings of various forms of aquatic life: whales, sharks, dolphins, sea birds, starfish, sea jellies all accurately and beautifully executed with Grissom's characteristic eye for detail.

Plenty of insects, too, but these he must have drawn from memory as several were of species she knew were endemic only to Costa Rica. But then Sara supposed Grissom didn't need to draw from a live model, not when he possessed that eidetic memory of his.

A thin ribbon marked his latest work. Sara's eyes went wide at the half-finished plain pencil sketch.

While not nearly as thorough as the others, she could easily recognize the subject as herself sitting in a camp chair out at Mount Charleston all decked out in her beekeeping gear as she'd been then.

As incomplete as it was, the details proved telling, intimate and knowing.

Rather than romanticizing the memory of her, Grissom had accurately captured instead the stiffness, the tightness in how she had held herself as they sat there waiting for the bees to return. Her expression was the only part left vague, as if perhaps he couldn't quite puzzle out what that particular look meant. Or perhaps he hadn't wanted to know.

Sara knew.

True, he had captured the tension in her spine, but not the tears that had itched at her eyes.

The tears that had entirely been her own fault.

While she had tried so hard not to read too much into his _I miss working side by side with you,_ Sara had let herself enjoy it too much, that afternoon with him and the bees. The work had come so easy, as if it were just like any other afternoon in the field with the two of them together.

Yet it wasn't. She knew that. It wasn't like it was before. It couldn't be. She knew that, too.

Which was why Sara had suddenly found herself too close to crying for comfort. As she had already shed far too many tears over Gil Grissom, she wasn't about to do it there and then and in front of him. No matter how hard it hurt.

Knowing this, Sara wondered why Grissom had selected that moment. Perhaps he had wanted to remember the day, keep that last afternoon of theirs together to carry with him.

"It helps me think. Relax -" offered Grissom quietly from behind her.

"The drawing."

It proved, too, a way to see, to understand, to grasp impressions, details one often missed in mere looking. But he didn't tell her this.

Sara started, snapped the book shut, caught and clueless as to how long he'd been standing there watching her. Perhaps she shouldn't have been surprised.

Grissom had long possessed the preternatural ability to appear out of nowhere. He just didn't normally catch her snooping in the process.

Perhaps she would have stammered an apology, attempted an explanation, something - anything - only it was in that precise moment that she realized she was standing there stark naked.

Hastily, Sara snatched up his recently appropriated shirt and hugged it to herself.

For a long while, Grissom said nothing, overcome as he always was at the sight of her barefoot, barelegged and beautiful as ever. All windswept curls and cheeks, her dark eyes bright, she took his breath away, but then she always had.

Though her own eyes were firmly fixed on the floor, Sara could feel his gaze on her, gentle as a caress, as warm and as appreciative as ever, as if she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. And to him, she was.

"Clothes," he supplied by way of explaining his sudden reappearance. "I came back for your clothes.

"To put in the wash." Grissom gestured to the neat pile on the chair.

"Laundry," he added when she stood there still stunned.

Blinking her way back into life, Sara stammered, "Of... Of course."

Still self-consciously clutching the fabric to herself, Sara suddenly felt silly and found she had to half-laugh at her own abrupt display of misplaced modesty.

As she swiftly swung the shirt over her shoulders and proceeded to do up the buttons with less than deft fingers, she murmured more to herself than anything a rueful "It's not like you haven't seen it all before."

Only Grissom didn't seem to be thinking the same.

"You don't have any reason to be shy," he said from where he lingered in the doorway.

"You never have," Grissom quietly maintained. He turned to go; let her finish.

She called him back. "Gil -"

He turned.

"The clothes," she said passing him the neatly folded bundle.

"Yeah -"

He returned her grin; she returned to her buttons.

While Grissom set about starting the laundry, Sara excused herself to the boat's cramped head to finish up her evening ablutions. She returned a few minutes later to find him perched on the edge of the mattress stripped down to his customary boxers and undershirt.

Feeling that faint flutter in her belly again, Sara said. "I found a spare toothbrush under the sink. I didn't think you'd mind."

"Of course not," he replied, clicking on the over bed lamp. Gesturing to the switch by the door he said, "Will you?"

As the room dimmed to a solitary pool of light, she watched Grissom slip beneath the sheets, sliding all the way to the wall to make room for her, whom he well knew out of long habit always liked to sleep closest to the door.

Wordlessly, he held the blankets open for her; equally wordlessly, she joined him, it all as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world for them to go to bed together.

Unsure if she would simply roll over to go to sleep, Grissom was pleased when Sara curled onto one side, the better to mold her body into his.

The bed certainly proved cozy to say the least. But that night, after too many days and nights spent sleeping alone, cozy was perfect. She nestled next to him as if she'd always belonged there, but then she did.

"This okay?" she asked, as she rested her head just over his heart.

"Very," he replied, his arms reflexively closing about her.

With a long contented sigh, Sara settled deeper into him.

She'd meant it when she'd told him she slept better with him there. Grissom did have that effect on her, well having him in the bed beside her did.

"Good night, Gil," she said, cuddling close.

"Good night, dear."

They lay there like that for a while, enjoying the nearness before Grissom broke the companionable silence with a hesitant, " _Sara?_ "

"Yeah?"

When no answer proved immediately forthcoming, she propped herself onto one elbow. Peering down at him to search his face in the faint light, she found him searching hers.

His lips moved, but no sound came out. Sara understood, was feeling much the same, not that there were no words, only so many.

In that silence hung so many things unspoken, yet not unfelt:

 _I can't believe you're here._

 _I'm so glad you're here._

 _I know I've failed you._

 _I'm sorry I hurt you._

 _I need you._

 _I want a life with you._

 _I never stopped loving you._

 _Always_ , Grissom most yearned to tell her, _it was you, what I've been looking for - it's always been you._

Yet even now, he couldn't seem to heave the words from his heart into his mouth.

"Yeah," Sara said again, seeming to understand this, and that there were in this life times beyond words.

This proving one of them.

Leaning in to brush an affectionate kiss against his lips, she was relieved to feel him relax into the kiss.

It was only barely just before sleep finally overtook them both that Sara confessed into the quiet, "I missed you."

Grissom's equally heartfelt "Every day" hummed against her skin.

Hearts light; eyes heavy, wave rocked and warm, they soon succumbed to sleep and dreamt, fingers and bodies still intertwined.

 _Continued in_ Boundless


	28. Twenty-eight: Boundless

**Twenty-eight: Boundless**

Sometime in the still as yet quiet stillness of the morning, Sara woke to the smell of the sea, the gentle rock and sway of the boat and the sure, steady beat of Gil Grissom's heart beneath her ear.

As she had slept like she hadn't in months - _years_ \- probably since the last time they'd been cuddle up close like this - and with all the attendant strangeness, it took Sara a rather long moment to register precisely where she was and the fact that she wasn't in fact still dreaming. Although she probably should have immediately recognized the latter as him here with her was all too good to be any dream.

From the firm almost protective arm about her waist and the equally tender brush of his thumb along the back of her hand, she sensed she wasn't the only one awake.

"Hey," she murmured, her voice still thick with sleep as she eased herself up on one elbow to beam down bright at him.

"Hey," Grissom replied in kind, impressed that he'd even been able to manage to get that single syllable out, captivated as he was by the sight of Sara before him. But then she always was beautiful first thing upon waking: fresh faced, hair mussed, her warm gaze still drowsy, all the cares of the day having yet to settle over her again.

Only this morning even more so.

"Good morning. It is morning?" she asked.

The cabin lacking any windows, there was no natural clue to the hour.

Grissom glanced over at his watch. "Only just."

Brushing her tousled curls back behind her ear, he urged, "Honey, go back to sleep."

As tempting as that idea might be, Sara found herself too pleasantly wide awake with him to want to wish so soon to slip back into slumber. That and Grissom's alertness didn't strike her as being of the recently acquired variety.

"Please tell me you slept," she said.

Grissom nodded, smiled, recalling as he did so all the times he had said as much to her over the years. "I did."

In point of fact, he, too, had slept better than he had since the last time he'd fallen asleep with Sara in his arms.

It was then Sara realized that as comfortable as she had been, considering neither of then had moved much during the course of the night, with him having been pinned beneath her like this, Sara knew Grissom couldn't have been.

"I think," she sighed with a rueful smile of her own, "we may need to rethink the sleeping arrangements."

To which Grissom gave her an uncharacteristically emphatic, " _No -_ "

"Come on, I know you have to be sore," she insisted, indicating the shoulder she had slept on.

Grissom grinned this off, his expression indicating he couldn't care less, even if he had indeed woken to his arm definitely asleep. True, too, he'd had to flex his fingers back from numbness and his whole left side still tingled with pins and needles. Though as it was worth any amount of discomfort to have her close again, there was no way he was going to ever willingly surrender that pleasure, discomfort or no.

Particularly as he found it already all too soon gone, Sara having suddenly slid from the sheets; leaving him feeling oddly bereft.

"Come here," she said, indicating he should take a seat at the edge of the mattress.

However unclear he might be as to her intentions, Grissom did as he was told.

His momentary disappointment at the loss of her warmth beside him gave way to delight when her ever nimble fingers set to work freeing the stiffness from his shoulders. At the way the heat of her hands bled through the thin cotton of his undershirt, his eyes drifted contently closed.

The barrier, however, soon proved too much for them both.

"This would be a lot easier if -" Sara supplied, clumsily tugging the T-shirt over his head without asking. Grissom wasn't about to complain.

Only -

He was suddenly struck by an abrupt bout of self-consciousness. While Gil Grissom had never been a particularly vain man, as his hair had gone mostly grey these days; his body more than a little soft about the middle over the years, it was hard not to feel that way next to Sara's persistent youth and slightness.

He needn't have worried. Sara didn't seem to notice nor care, her gaze as warm, wanting and appreciative as ever as she took in his deep sailor's tan, his now far more salt than pepper thin patch of chest hair, the several scars which hadn't been there before (there were stories there, she knew). His sun and aged silvered short-cropped hair was certainly, she thought, sexy as hell.

As if sensing the source of his sudden reticence, Sara leaned in and murmured into his ear: "Relax, Gil. I have seen it all before you know.

"And you don't have any reason to be shy either."

Any further hesitancy instantly vanished at the all-consuming contact of skin on skin. Her hands were heaven.

Overcome, Grissom's eyes drifted closed once more; his head fell forward. His body relaxed as her tender touch took him in.

His contented sigh escaped before he could contain it.

"Better?" Sara asked.

"Mmm," was as coherent a comment as he could manage at the moment.

Before long, her strong, yet gentle, deliberate fingers had worked the last of the knots free from his shoulders. Grissom wasn't about to tell Sara this however. He was enjoying having those hands of hers on him again too much to want it to stop any time soon.

Herself apparently grasping that her massage had done the trick, Sara began to shift her ministrations from Grissom's shoulders and neck down his spine. Her thumbs walked their way down each of his vertebrae, while the tips of her short nails traced up his back. Before long, the contact left him barely breathing.

When a low rumbling purr gave way to a rather emphatic moan, Sara chuckled, "Been a while?"

While her comment may have been meant more as a tease than anything, Grissom replied in earnest, "Too long. Nearly three years too long."

Sara did the mental math before stammering in surprise, "There... There hasn't been anyone... since -"

"Since you?" he finished. Then meeting her gaze, he answered with an equally honest, "No."

Caught off guard at this, Sara simply stared.

"You can't make love to someone when you're still in love with someone else.

"At least I can't," Grissom readily confessed.

However doubtful he might be of her answer, he hazarded to ask, "You?"

Sara shook her head. "No, not really. I mean Nick tried to set me up a few times. Finn, too, but -"

Despite all of Nick Stokes' well-meant, good-natured comments about it being time for her to _get back on the horse Sara_ just hadn't been interested. Thankfully, work had frequently provided a convenient excuse.

"His heart was in the right place," she said, "Hers, too, in her own way." Then with a shrug Sara added, "Would never have worked out.

"They weren't you."

They shared a smile at this.

Nevertheless, there was one thing Sara needed to know. She hesitated, not entirely certain she wanted or was ready for his answer. Yet she had to ask.

Heather Kessler's taunts about the shared intimacy between her and Grissom coupled with Dalton Betton's _When she got you into her bed, you didn't want anything else_ , still ringing in Sara's ears, she stammered, "So... you and Heather didn't - weren't -"

Grissom's brows knitted as if the thought hadn't even occurred to him, which apparently it hadn't.

"We... We spoke on the phone several times after I'd heard her granddaughter had been killed," he said, still more perplexed than anything. "But I only saw her again a few hours before you did."

Besides, there hadn't been anything even remotely beyond friendship between him and the former dominatrix turned therapist for far more than a decade now. That and honestly what little once had been paled in comparison to the life he'd had with Sara, at least that life before he'd gone and royally screwed it up foolishly attempting to be noble.

Surely Sara knew this. Though from the way she was looking at him now, more surprised than relieved, perhaps not.

Grissom reached up, brushed her hair back behind her ears.

"Sara," he said softly, " _Honey -_ I told you: You'll always be my last."

Sara, unable to summon up any verbal reply to this, opted instead to press her lips to his in response. The last of her fears assuaged, she let herself go and melted completely into the kiss and the ones that followed.

Upon them finally breaking apart to breathe, Grissom slid his arms around her; drew her close so that he might lean his forehead against the barely there bow of her belly. Her hands settled in his grizzled hair. They rested there together like that for a while.

Until Sara felt, rather than heard, him chuckle.

"What?" she asked.

Fond amusement filled his upturned face. "What is it with you and buttons? I just noticed -"

That wasn't all he'd just noticed. His eyes roving over her, Grissom happily took in how the flannel shirt he had lent her the night before concealed very little of the long, lithe lines of her bare legs.

No, there really was nothing more heartrendingly alluring than Sara in one of his shirts he had to admit, albeit it privately. In that moment, he swore never to complain about her habit of appropriating them ever again, except perhaps in jest, as in now.

At his open display of simultaneous appreciation and hilarity, Sara glanced down to find she really had managed yet again to do up her buttons wrong.

Some things never changed.

Still, she offered by way of excuse: "It was late and I was a little -"

"Preoccupied?" he offered in return.

"Distracted," Sara countered. "And very."

She might have sighed and shook her head after saying this, only his fingers were hovering just above said offending buttons.

"May I?"

"Be my guest," she said by way of amused assent.

Only far longer than Sara would have deemed wholly necessary, Grissom toyed with the bit of round white plastic before finally slipping it free. Equally slowly the next and a third followed as he worked his way up from hem to collar.

Except instead of doing the buttons up properly again once they'd all finally been undone, he eased the fabric aside, three of his fingers tracing their way along the bare skin of her sternum down to her belly button before both of his thick, palm calloused hands slid about her waist.

It was her turn to sigh and shiver more than a little weak-kneed at his touch.

Pleased, more than pleased, to discover she wasn't wearing anything underneath, Grissom nuzzled her soft, warm skin. His beard and lips grazing along that sensitive space along her ribs, Sara luxuriated in the attention.

"Please," she murmured breathily, "tell me you aren't planning on shaving it all off again."

While he might not always be the most socially astute of individuals, Gil Grissom knew there was only one answer to a question asked like that.

Accordingly, his "No, dear," buzzed against her flesh.

Sara nearly swooned as his rough, rope-worn hands slid up her legs.

" _Gil -_ "

When he unexpectedly withdrew, her eyes snapped open wide.

Sara was about to ask what the flash of concern on his warm, willing, wanting yet waiting face portended when he asked, "Too soon?"

Perhaps it had been a while and maybe rationally neither of them should rush into anything, but Sara found she didn't want to wait or to be wooed. All she wanted was him. Besides, they had wasted far too much time already; would have nearly lost everything if Betton had gotten his way.

Life was too short.

So Sara shook her head. "Too long," she replied and kissed him in such a way there was no way to mistake her desires.

 _Definitely too long,_ she thought.

Too long since his hands - his mouth - had been on her like this. Too long since he'd rendered her speechless, breathless, thoughtless in that way only he ever had. Too long since she had felt so utterly lost - and found - all at once.

Her lips urging his open, they kissed as if they were both young and hungry again. Melting into each other, neither resurfaced until they both needed to come up for air.

However each proved pleased at the prospect, neither, too, had any clue how Sara had ended up straddling Grissom's lap. Nor did they care. They were far too busy kissing in any case.

While Sara doubted any of their former coworkers could have even possibly begun to fathom it, Gil Grissom knew how to kiss. He kissed like he did everything - thoroughly - and with a passion that superseded his love of insects, obscure quotations and other various arcana. She could feet it heart and soul - and down to her toes.

That morning, after the past few days - and years - of distance, neither could get close enough, be close enough, stay close enough.

Wanting nothing more than to be skin on skin close, Grissom slowly peeled the plaid from first one shoulder than the other, tracing lingering kisses along her newly exposed collarbones as he went.

For her part, Sara didn't even have the chance to feel self-conscious. His eyes and hands took her in with an appreciation that bordered on reverence. For the body beneath them proved even more beautiful - more everything - than he remembered. But then somehow his memories of her - of their times together - had always paled compared to the reality of her.

They always had.

True, he had seen it all before, kissed and caressed it all before, and yet as familiar as it all felt, it felt, too, like the first time. Sara simply happened to him all over again. She always had. She, he knew now, always would.

"Beautiful," he breathed into her hair as his palms and fingertips played over her bare back, inhaling as he did the scent of sunshine, sea, salt, the stars and Sara on her skin.

"So beautiful."

Sara, never having seen herself that way notwithstanding, with him here like this, she could almost believe the words could be true.

" _Sara_ -" he said, so much in those two syllables and yet nowhere near enough.

His eyes searched hers, his lips twitched as if there was much he wanted to, but couldn't quite say.

She understood this, felt much the same. Nor did she need the words. They were obvious in his eyes, his touch, in that smile he never wore for anyone but her.

No, she didn't need the words.

In that moment, she realized the truth of this:

 _While sometimes all we have are words to make love with;_

 _sometimes we need no words at all._

Taking his face into her hands, she pulled him close and against his lips murmured, "Show me."

He did.

xxxxxxx

Unable to get enough of her, Grissom drew Sara in for another kiss. And another. These longer; deeper.

How had he forgotten how it was to kiss her? The feel of her lips as ever soft, warm, giving and yielding and so very Sara.

Words might fail him, but his hands knew what to do. How to touch and take in the body he knew by heart. How to please and pleasure her. How to make her moan and murmur his name.

Grateful for the gentle pressure at the small of her back to steady her, Sara arched into the hand sliding down her spine. She gasped. Her head fell back.

His mouth made its way from hers down the full length of her exposed neck.

The better to brush his lips along her breasts, he eased her onto her knees before he teased first one then the other of her pert nipples taut with his tongue.

Near whimpering with pleasure, yet wanting - needing - more, there was no way to misread her long, low moan of " _Gil_ -"

"Soon," Grissom grinned against her skin, his pleasure at her pleasure plain.

Oh how he loved being able to satisfy her like this, watch her eyes both darken and brighten with desire as she turned wanton - and wet - beneath his mouth and the motion of his facile fingers.

Near desperately, she clung to him as his lips and thumb tormented her into ecstasy.

Before long she had to bury her moans into his shoulder; he cradled her quivering body close, losing himself in the catch and hitch of breath, the shudder and sigh of pleasure pouring over her.

Sara sank against him spent, content, albeit wanting more, wanting all of him, to be once more as near as two bodies could be.

Barely back to breathing again, the persistent twitch of him against her inner thigh roused and aroused her.

In between their renewed open-mouthed kisses, Sara relieved him of the last barrier between them.

As easy as they ever had, the two of them fit easily together again.

With a great gasp of pleasure of her own, Sara eased him deeper into her snug, wet warmth. Skin against skin, breath against breath, the slow sweet sultry sway began, adding their own rhythmic rocking to the gentle lapping of the waves outside.

The love flowing freely between them, the rest of the world faded away in those breathtaking moments; then, there, there was only each other, lovers once again in every sense of the word.

 _I love you. I love you. I love you_ , each longed to say, but with barely air for breath, there were no words.

Their lips and hands, bodies and eyes, spoke for them instead.

It took every last shred of his self control to hold himself back, to make it all last even just a little longer. It felt too good; she felt too good, to so soon surrender.

But feeling her begin to quake and tremble in his arms once more, Grissom's body joined hers. With moan-filled kisses, they let go together.

 _Definitely too long_ , they both silently agreed as the peace and quiet comfort settled over them both.

They stayed lost in each other, kissing, caressing; relishing the continued closeness. As Grissom traced absent circles along the small of her back, Sara settled deeper into him.

It wasn't until he tasted the salt on her lips that Grissom drew back in concern unsure as to what he'd done.

If he'd hurt her -

"Sara? _Honey?_ "

Only Sara practically beamed. While her eyes may have been wet, her smile blazed bright.

"Happy tears?" he asked, recalling her earlier assurance that not all tears were unhappy ones.

" _Very_."

Understanding this, he thumbed then kissed the last of the wetness away.

They shared a fond smile.

How she loved that man, bugs, quotes, awkwardness and all.

Except, even though she had said as much to Heather Kessler, indirectly hinted as much to Catherine, Sara realized she hadn't as yet told him, hadn't said the actual words. She had to tell him.

Her resultant "I love you" came quick, but true.

He knew. Grissom already knew, but it was still good to hear.

His own reply proved as solemn as any vow:

" _Always_."

xxxxxxx

Much later that unhurried morning found Sara Sidle relishing how the warmth of the sun and the cool of the breeze played along her skin as she stood along the forward railing of the _Ishmael,_ clad once again in Grissom's shirt as well as her own now freshly laundered jeans; her shower damp curls blowing about her.

She enjoyed even more the silent slip of one of Grissom's hands along her waist as he drew himself to her. He pressed a kiss into her hair. She leaned back against him, content.

They lingered like that a long while, silently snuggled close.

Not all silences were hard or hurtful. This one felt like a stolen bit of paradise neither had ever hoped nor dared to believe they might possess again.

"So," Sara said after a while, "what happens now?"

Grissom appeared to consider this for a moment, before replying:

"Anything -"

"Anything?" she echoed.

Then in the same instant they each agreed:

" _Anything_ -"

 _Continued in_ Handheld


	29. Twenty-nine: Handheld

**Twenty-nine: Handheld**

 _Anything -_

Even here and now, Sara could practically hear her now husband intone that simple, yet telling word. She seriously doubted this - him strapped to a hospital bed; her ever trapped on the other side of the glass - was what Grissom had meant that day.

She had felt so alive then, alive in ways she hadn't in years. Standing there on the bow of the boat, Grissom there beside her, the vast endless span of ocean ahead of them, it really had felt like a moment of infinite possibilities, that anything was possible as long as they had each other. That life really could be full of promise and hope.

Oddly, that feeling hadn't faded in the slightest over last couple of months. Only the day before, before Hannah happened, the possibilities seemed no less endless than they had that morning.

But then Hannah happened.

Never in her wildest nightmares had Sara imagined this. It had been bad enough when Betton had targeted Grissom and that madman hadn't even gotten close to laying an actual hand on him. Hannah had.

No, this was certainly not the _anything_ either of them had had in mind.

xxxxxxx

Nothing much had changed in the little more than half an hour the two Mrs. Grissoms had been away. Arriving back in the ICU, Sara immediately took stock of the various monitors. His body temperature hadn't risen much past the 90 degrees she'd previously noted, while the ventilator kept him at a regular eighteen respirations per minute. His heart fluttered; beat much faster than his usual 70 beats per minute. On the vaguely plus side, the hypothermia had significantly dropped his typically high blood pressure.

However as yet still disquieting, the numbers were far easier to deal with than the sight of her husband's persistent shivering. That definitely hadn't changed. Strange how quickly some things became normal.

At the gentle hand on her back, Sara started. Loathed even to drag her eyes away, she reluctantly turned. Her mother-in-law attempted to give her a reassuring smile. Albeit futile the effort at comfort proved, Sara appreciated the gesture all the same.

 _He loves you_ , Betty signed after a while, _never_ _forget that_.

Sara's eyes went momentarily wide. Maybe she shouldn't have been surprised, Betty never balked at speaking her mind. No matter the topic.

Although Sara supposed mentioning matters of the heart was far preferable to discourses on her and Grissom's sex life, or the once relative lack thereof.

Yet it was Betty's inherent acceptance, pleasure even, in this fact proving plain, which left Sara the one more than a little speechless.

Giving her arm an affectionate pat, Betty signed, _You know what Gandhi once said -_

Sara shook her head, having a hard time keeping the twitch of smile from tugging at the corners of her mouth at this all too quintessential Grissom behavior.

' _Where there is love there is life,'_ Betty signed. _And where there is life there is always hope._

Hope, Sara had to admit, was hard here on the other side of the glass watching her husband shiver so violently he made the bed shake. Hard, too, knowing that the passing hours didn't necessarily put Grissom any further past danger.

Only Betty was still signing:

 _Did Gil ever tell you about the garden - our garden - when he was growing up?_ she asked.

While her husband had indeed mentioned it, Sara seriously doubted from the pride on her face when she spoke of it, that his mother would be pleased to discover that the sum total of all Gil Grissom had ever said of it was bemoaning his having to pull the inevitable weeds, that and cataloging all the bugs he'd frequently found there.

Betty was signing again in any case: _The hummingbirds loved it. The garden was full of them._

Sara could imagine it.

Several species had controlled territories near the cabin where she and Grissom had spent their first honeymoon. They were breathtaking - and brutal.

There was nothing cute and cuddly about _los colibrís_. The males frequently fought dirty, body-slamming, clawing, tearing at any other hummer that happened to hover into their fiercely guarded territories. No wonder the name of the Aztec's god of war Huitzilopochtli partially originated from the Classical Nahuatl word for hummingbirds. Apropos really that a deity demanding human sacrifice to stave off the darkness would be represented by the most vicious of birds that glistened in the light. But then if the Mesoamericans had it right, hummingbirds were reincarnated Aztec warriors. Sara could certainly see why they might have believed as much.

In a far more sentimental mood, Grissom used to say that hummingbirds were nothing more than feathery jewels built of little else than air and heart.

 _Amazing creatures hummingbirds_ , Betty was signing, slowly, the better for Sara not to miss a word. _When Spanish colonists first encountered them they called them resurrection birds_.

Sara had heard this. Knew, too, the reason. How every night a hummingbird reduced its regularly amped up metabolism (a human with similar energy consumption would need to eat 400 hamburgers a day) nearly 95%, lowering its heart rate from an almost blindingly hyperactive 1,200 beats per minute to a mere 50 on a cold night and thus inducing a state of suspended animation, a torpor so profound, that no bird could be roused in the middle of it. Yet somehow every morning the tiny birds shivered their way back to life again.

Sensing where Betty might be going with this story, Sara really did have to smile. Like mother, like son indeed.

 _They nearly die every day, only to be revived again. Surely a man could survive it once,_ Betty said.

 _Love - life - is always a miracle. Obviously they happen. Have hope._

When her mother-in-law put it that way, how could Sara not?

xxxxxxx

Some time after three that afternoon Greg returned before heading home from finally finishing up at the lab, a large brown paper bag of the sort they used to package evidence in hand.

"I thought you could probably use a change of clothes," he offered as he passed the parcel over.

At Betty's inquiring look, Greg added, "And before you ask, they're from that stash you keep in your locker. Not," he more than a little sheepishly admitted, "that I would usually pass up an opportunity to go through your drawers -"

Sara struggled to keep from rolling her eyes as she shook her head.

 _What did he say?_ Betty inquired of the exchange.

Sara signed, _He's just being a smart ass._

Seeming to understand this, Betty nodded. _One of the few times where being smart is the same as being stupid._

Once Sara had managed to wrap her fatigued brain around that one, she had to admit Betty had a point and chuckled.

"What?" asked Greg.

"We were just discussing your I.Q.," Sara supplied by way of reply.

"And here I was going to ask if you needed me to bring you anything else," sulked Greg.

While not bothering with an apology, Sara gave him a grateful smile. "No, I'm good. But thank you." And she meant it. "Go home. Get some rest," she urged.

Wisely, Greg chose not to call Sara out on this particular display of hypocrisy. "I'd say you, too, but -"

"Yeah," Sara agreed.

The two of them exchanged a lingering hug, Greg apparently needing the comfort as much as Sara did, for the as yet still technically young man appeared far older and more deflated that Sara could recall seeing him in a long time.

Wordlessly she and Betty watched his weary steps wend their way back towards the elevator.

Once Sara had explained what Greg had brought in the bag, Betty indicated the shower room down the hall.

 _You should go,_ she insisted. _It will help. Besides, you wouldn't want him to first see you looking like this._

Perhaps on any other day Sara might have taken umbrage at this, but for one, she was pretty sure Betty hadn't quite meant it like the words sounded. Secondly, Sara knew after more than a day and a half of too many hours of worry and too little respite, she had to look a mess.

Sure her mother-in-law would keep an ever eagle eye on her son, Sara slipped off for as few minutes as she could manage.

xxxxxxx

Several hours later, how many Sara had no clue as apparently she had managed yet again to doze off still standing up at her now usual post at the glass, Sara roused at the warmth of a blanket being draped over her shoulders.

From overhead, the hospital P.A. system announced the official end of regular visiting hours for the day.

This was when Sara noticed Betty, having gathered up her handbag and tugged on her jacket, looked all the world as if she thought she fell under the hospital's usual visitor strictures. Sara was about to protest that Betty was welcome to stay as long as she liked when she noticed the fatigue in her mother-in-law's eyes.

That and with Grissom's temperature only just hovering around 94 degrees, it would still be hours yet before they took him off the bypass machine, let alone weaned him out of his medically assisted coma. Thus there was little reason for his eighty-odd year old mother to wait.

Still, Sara was sad to see her go, Betty's quiet company having proven oddly comforting that day. But then Sara had always found that the Grissoms - both mother and son - always were full of surprises. She rather liked them both the better for it.

 _I won't ask you to go home,_ Betty assured her. _I wouldn't either. But try and get some rest. The next few days are going to be difficult._

Indicating the finally far more still form of her son in the bed in the room beyond them, she said, _He's going to need you even more when he wakes up._

Abruptly her mother-in-law's typically determined expression turned inscrutable as Betty hesitated for a moment before the glass, causing Sara to only then fully comprehend how just as hard all this had to be - seeing Grissom like this - for his mother.

Sara wished she had the words to thank her, comfort her, say anything at all.

But she didn't. Betty, in any case, seemed to understand.

Patting Sara's arm affectionately she said, _You'll call when he does?_

 _Of course,_ Sara signed. _Do you want me to have someone at the nurses' station call you a cab?_

 _No, no. David texted to tell me he would be by to pick me up in a few minutes._

Why was Sara not surprised?

 _He's a nice young man, though a bit over eager,_ added Betty.

Sara really did have to choke back a chuckle at this, though whether at the words _nice_ or _young_ in reference to Dave Hodges, or the fact that Betty had hit the nail on the head when speaking of him as being over eager, she wasn't quite sure. Of course to Betty Hodges was young. As for _nice_ , Hodges did have an annoying habit of trying to ever ingratiate himself.

Not that Sara wasn't more than a little fond of the trace tech. Like she had once remarked to her husband Hodges rather grew on you - like fungus. And in this particular case, Sara had to admit fungus had his heart in the right place.

Sara, however, didn't have much time to ponder this as Betty drew her in for a hug of all things. The elder Mrs. Grissom wasn't a big hugger. Sara could have counted the number of embraces she'd received over the years on one hand and still had fingers left over. In some ways, its rarity made the gesture mean even more.

Then giving Sara's wedding ring bedecked left hand a quick but affectionate squeeze, she signed a genuine _I'm glad_ and went without saying good-bye.

It was only after her mother-in-law had disappeared into the elevator that Sara realized that while Betty Grissom hadn't been able to do anything substantial for her son she had realized she could do something for his wife. And Betty had.

Sara softly smiled, having only just understood in that moment that she had been mothered for the first time in her life.

xxxxxxx

Once Betty had gone, Sara set about settling in for the night and however long it would take her husband to wake.

No, there was no way she was about to let her husband out of her sight anytime soon.

There was certainly no way they were going to spend even one night apart, not as long as she had something to say about it. Even if together meant him on that side and her on this side of that narrow pane of glass.

They hadn't spent one night apart - not one - since the day she had first shown up in San Diego the September before. That had been one of the first decisions the two of them had made together, one they both had been equally particularly insistent about: no more life - no more nights - apart.

Sara was just starting to see why her mother-in-law had been so adamant all those years ago now. But then when any Grissom was right, they were right.

Besides, there really was no way Sara could have faced it alone, being back home in their bed without her husband beside her.

Sure, it was still strange and yet not, even after all their years waking together, spending the days and nights together, going to bed together. Strange, but wonderfully good strange.

She needed him, this Sara knew, needed him in the bed beside her, despite all the inevitable snoring. She was certainly not going to complain about said snoring ever again. Tease maybe, complain never.

Sara meant what she had told Grissom their first night back together, she had missed him, missed him more than she could have imagined, indeed missed him every day, as he had added.

She certainly missed him now, even no further apart as they were on other sides of the glass.

Yet she was glad, too, they had even this night together like this, for it meant there still as yet remained the possibility of more nights yet to come.

xxxxxxx

As fatigued as Sara felt, she couldn't quite bring herself to sit. For one, hospital chairs weren't exactly comfy and two, she knew if she actually sat she would have to stop and think and feel and she didn't want to have to stop and think and feel right now. All she wanted was to be with Grissom however she could.

"I thought I'd still find you here -" Came the familiar, yet utterly unexpected voice from behind her.

Sara turned to find Jim Brass standing there sans suit for once. Which oddly was Sara's first thought: that it was strange to see the former police captain in anything other than a coat and tie. Even his post retirement gig as head of Eclipse security apparently necessitated such formal wear. Yet here he was in jeans and a polo beneath a simple windbreaker looking more casual and at more ease than Sara could recall seeing him.

"I'd hug you -" Sara began, "But -"

Brass shrugged. "Back's back to normal. Apart from the scars. But then apparently scars are sexy."

While that could indeed prove true, Sara wasn't about to say as much to him. Brass was still speaking in any case.

"Thanks to you," he said, drawing her in for that hug anyway. "I hear Gil and I have the same guardian angel."

"Hardly," Sara replied, thinking Brass was over exaggerating her efforts in both instances.

Giving her a thorough once over once they had broke apart, Brass observed, "It drove him crazy, too, having to wait to see you."

"Is it that obvious?" Sara smiled sadly.

When he opted not to dignify this particular query with a response, she said, "While it's good to see you, weren't visiting hours over a few hours ago?"

"More than a few," he acknowledged upon giving his watch a quick glance. "Just have to know how to sweet talk the nurses," he said with a grin and wink. "Sometimes it's not what you know -"

"It's who you know," Sara finished equally knowingly.

Brass next drew a tall Styrofoam cup from a take out bag. "Brought you something. Not coffee," he assured her. He indicated her shaking hands. "You have any more coffee and you'll be up for a week."

 _Like that wasn't likely anyway_ , Sara thought.

"Orange juice. _Just juice_ ," he said.

Not that something a little stronger - a lot stronger - wasn't tempting. More than tempting.

"Sometimes being sober sucks," Sara sighed taking the cup, more for having something to do with her hands than anything else.

Brass had to agree.

"And I come bearing breakfast," he said.

"Breakfast?" Sara echoed in surprise, fairly certain that nowhere near that much time could have possibly passed.

"Yeah, that meal you usually eat before heading into work."

"You still a creature of the night these days then?"

Brass shrugged. "Old habits die hard. That and the dark always seems to bring out the worst in people."

"Occupational hazard."

"I like to think of it more as job security these days," he replied.

Holding the bag open the better for her to take in its contents, he offered, "Nothing fancy. Just a bagel and cream cheese."

While she wasn't nearly quite ready for food, despite it being far more than half a day since that soup and sandwich in the hospital cafeteria, Sara gratefully took the proffered bag.

Then something occurred to her. "You haven't been talking to Betty have you?" she asked.

" _Betty Grissom_?" It was his turn to ask by way of clarification. Brass almost looked alarmed at the prospect. It was good to see Sara wasn't the only one regularly intimidated by her indomitable mother-in-law. "No - Why?"

Sara shook her head. "Nothing." Setting the bag alongside the paper bag Greg had brought she said, "Maybe later if that's okay."

"He wasn't all that hungry when it was you either."

Then gesturing to a now far more still Grissom through the glass Brass asked, "How's he doing?"

"Doctors upgraded him from _critical_ to _serious, but stable_ about an hour ago."

"That sounds promising."

"Yeah."

As if Brass could read her mind in her lackluster reply he said, "No news really isn't good news."

"Nope."

"Hang in there, kid."

Once had anyone else dared to address her as such, Sara might have taken offense, but as this was Brass and Sara had grown a bit older - if not all that much wiser - she accepted the comment with all the fondness with which it had been given.

"It's good to see you two together again," he quietly admitted. "Present circumstances notwithstanding."

Sara smiled at this. "Yeah," she agreed.

"You know for such a smart man, he really could be strangely stupid about some things," Brass observed.

 _He wasn't the only one_ , rued Sara.

Giving her hand a fond pat, he said, "Good to see it all worked out in the end anyway, Mrs. Grissom."

 _Mrs. Grissom?_

Sara's brows wrinkled at this. Technically true or no, Brass certainly hadn't been present when any of the doctors or nurses addressed her as such.

Then recognizing it was her left hand he'd been so intent on, Sara realized that he, like Betty Grissom, hadn't missed the ring, or what it meant.

Brass gave her a nonchalant shrug and a conspiratorial wink. "I did used to head the department you know."

"Before my time," said Sara with the hint of a smile.

"True," he chuckled.

"So," Sara said, "you just stopped by to play delivery guy?"

"Nah. Thought I'd sit here with you for a while. If you don't mind."

"Aren't they expecting you back at the casino tonight?" she asked.

"Boss gave me some time off," he replied, settling into a seat. "Family emergency."

xxxxxxx

Throughout the long hours of the night, they all came and stayed, her coworkers from the lab, in ones and twos to keep Sara company; to let her know she didn't have to do this all on her own.

But then that was what family did. They were just there.

Sometime after four a.m., back on her own for a bit, as Catherine and Lindsey had just gotten the call from Auto Detail notifying them the vehicles in a messy driving under the influence case had finally been dropped off at the garage, Sara's momentary solitude was interrupted by the young nurse Sara had been earlier introduced to as in charge of monitoring her husband's care during the night.

"Mrs. Grissom -"

Sara blanched. While the monitors had given her no reason to be fearful, at the woman's determined approach, Sara's heart sank.

Perhaps no news might really be good news after all.

Sensing Sara's disquiet, the scrub clad early thirty-something blonde whose name Sara couldn't at the moment quite recall, gave her a soft reassuring smile. "It's okay. I just wanted to let you know we're about to take your husband off the bypass machine. His temp's looking good.

"He won't wake for a while, but if you give us a few minutes, you can go in and see him. We know you've been waiting."

Sara nearly wept with happiness at the news.

Only those few minutes felt like forever.

Suddenly feeling far more anxious rather than less, Sara began to pace again, nervously chewing at her lower lip as she unconsciously tucked and re-tucked an errant strand back behind her ear.

Until that same nurse now holding the door open for her said, "You can go in now."

However eager as Sara had been to see him, finally being able to now, she found herself caught up short by the sight of the now still form beneath the sheets.

After all the hours of violent shivering, he looked so - so still -

As if -

But he wasn't.

The monitors said as much. His heartbeat danced. The ventilator whooshed its ebb and flow.

Still, he was still, so still.

The nurses having eased him onto his side the better to take the pressure off the sore spots where his damp, bare skin had come into prolonged direct contact with the frigid metal gurney, Sara had to come about the bed to finally get a glimpse of his face, and even then much of it remained concealed by the oxygen mask.

However gaunt, haggard and grizzled Grissom may have appeared, at least the haunting grey hue he'd worn when they had first pulled him from the cooler had warmed to pale, his blued lips into a faint pink, howbeit chapped and broken from the cold as they were.

Sara couldn't recall ever seeing him looking so small and vulnerable as he did now, nearly as vulnerable as she felt.

" _Gil -_ " His name slipped from her lips.

But then perhaps it didn't matter if he could hear her or not. She wanted - needed - for him to know she was here, would always be here.

All at once, Sara found she didn't know what to do with her hands.

She knew what she most wanted to do: to slip beneath the sheet beside him, hold him close and never let him go.

But having been warned of the extent of the frostnipped rawness of his flesh Sara held back, despite her desperate desire to find reassurance in the feel of him beneath her fingertips.

Not that she could have even actually held his hand, not with his fingers bandaged sausage thick, while bruises blossomed beyond the borders of the sterile wrappings about his wrists.

Her own hands clasped firmly to her sides, she leaned in to brush the breath of a kiss into his hair.

Her nose twitched at the foreign, sickly antiseptic redolence that cloyingly clung to him. She missed the salt and sea and simple clean scent of him.

Unable to resist any longer, Sara gave in to what she had been dying to do for all those interminable hours she'd spent stuck on the other side of the glass, she reached out, gently resting first just the pads of her fingertips, then her palm along the left side of his chest.

The better to take in the feel of him, her eyes drifted shut. Her breath stilled, slowly evened into his.

Ignoring the regular monitor beep and the ventilator's mechanical rush, she focused solely on that feel of him through the thin cotton hospital gown.

She waited - waited - waited - for the reassuring rhythm to pulse beneath her fingertips.

There it was, only a flicker at first, then surer, steadier, that two-part life beat, the contract and release, that ebb and flow of heartbeat. _Life_.

And Sara breathed, though she nearly had to cling to the bedrail to steady herself, so overwhelmed with relief as she was she'd gone more than a little weak at the knees. But then Gil Grissom had often rendered her that way.

At the sudden sound of the nurse's quiet footfalls returning to the room, Sara jerked her hand away.

"Fresh blankets," the woman offered, holding up the direct from the warmer bundle.

To cover her own momentary disquiet, Sara insisted on taking them from her, "Let me. Please -"

The nurse demurred, readily passing the blankets to her.

At the nurse's strange expression at the particularly careful way Sara tucked the cotton over her husband's bandaged soles, Sara offered by way of explanation, "His... his feet always get cold."

Giving her an understanding nod, the nurse asked, "How long have the two of you been married?"

"Just remarried, actually," Sara said with a soft, sad smile as she peered down at her husband. "And not nearly long enough."

 _No, not nearly long enough_ , her heart echoed.

The nurse gave her another nod before leaving the two of them to it: Grissom to sleep; his wife to continue to keep quiet vigil.

Pausing in the doorway, she turned, said, "I know it's not really protocol, but you can stay in here with him as long as you like. I'll mark it in the chart."

Sara practically beamed her thanks as she sank into the bedside chair.

"If you need anything, just press the call button," the nurse said, tugging the curtains in front of the glass closed to give them a bit of privacy.

"And, Mrs. Grissom, it's okay - okay to hold his hand. Just be gentle."

Sara needed no further encouragement. Almost immediately, she reached out to rest a shaking hand over one of his thickly bandaged ones. Curling her fingers about it, she grasped it gentle.

Even with the bandages between them, the faint bleed of warmth spread from him into her palm. At this, Sara smiled, herself finally feeling truly warm for the first time since the moment Hannah had placed Grissom's wedding band on the interrogation room table.

Hand clasped as they were, Sara found herself recalling from the not so distant depths of memory the Captain's benediction pronounced as it had been over these exact same hands held fast in marriage once more only the week before:

"These are the hands of your best friend," the Captain had begun, "strong and full of love for you as today and for always you promise to love and cherish each other.

"The hands that will ever passionately adore you. The ones that will with the slightest touch bring you joy and comfort like no other.

"The hands that will hold fast to yours in times of fear or grief; the hands that will grant you strength when you need it.

"These, too, are the hands that will work alongside yours as you build this life of yours together.

"And as the days turn to years, these will be the hands that will ever be reaching for yours."

 _Yes,_ Sara knew, _these were those hands._

xxxxxxx

A/N: The Captain's aforementioned benediction is modified from a traditional handfasting blessing. Like Sara, I'm not all that big on tradition for the sake of tradition, but not all traditions are bad.


	30. Thirty: Wake Up Call

**Thirty: Wake Up Call**

Warm darkness gradually resolved itself into light.

After the morgue freezer's deep dark, Gil Grissom had to blink back the over-bright.

With the inherent fog of disorientation coupled with the artificial haze of medication, it took him far longer than usual to get both his eyes and brain to finally focus.

While he had no clue what time of day or night it was where he might be he had a fairly good idea: Desert Palms most likely. After all, the thin, crisp hospital sheets weren't all that unlike morgue ones. That and the resident hum and beat were the sort of symphony of sounds only a medical center made. As to how or when he had arrived, he was equally ignorant. Though none of that mattered.

Not with her here.

How fitting it felt that she who had been his last conscious thought would be his first conscious sight.

She was here.

Sara was here.

His Sara - his wife - was here.

While his mind might still be murky; every inch of him loudly protesting in pain, yet Gil Grissom found he couldn't help but smile to find her there: Sara asleep in the chair beside him; her head pillowed on her arms atop the edge of his mattress.

Naturally this wasn't the first time he'd found her like this. It had been an altogether too regular occurrence in those first few years after she'd come to Vegas before Grissom could add the persuasion of a lover to the dictates of a boss.

Still not entirely sure if he could trust his sight or not, he hazarded to reach out a trembling hand. His breath caught at the movement, but that wasn't all bad. The pain proved he wasn't dead. The dead didn't hurt, certainly not like this. He tried to be grateful for it. Tried.

It proved far easier to relish the reality of his hand settling into Sara's mess of curls.

How ever could he have doubted it?

In person, Sara Sidle had always been so much more than any of his memories, dreams or fantasies could ever possibly contain.

However tentative and tender his touch, Sara immediately roused. She started. Then gasped. Grinned.

And nearly wept.

" _Gil?_ Gil!"

Her face floated further into focus, resolved into the features he knew and loved so well.

" _Sara_ \- _Honey -_ "

His hoarse rasp barely able to be heard over the oxygen mask, he attempted to bat it away best as he could manage with his bandage immobilized hand.

"Here, let me," Sara said gently.

Easing the mask aside, she beamed down at him.

His eyes searched hers, drinking her in deep as if he couldn't get enough of the sight of her face.

Yet strangely, his features abruptly furled rather than relaxed into ease.

"What -" Sara began.

His eyes went wide, his parched lips parted. With his voice oddly insistent, he stammered through the daze of painkillers, fatigue and shock, "Hannah - Hannah West -"

"Shh - shh," she hushed in hopes of calming him, his heart monitor beeping ever faster at his fear. "We - We got her, Gil. It's okay. You're okay."

Though her last words felt spoken far more for her own sake than his.

There were still far too many moments that she had had to remind herself that Hannah couldn't hurt him any further any more.

Sara struggled to smile as she tried desperately not to cry.

Grissom reached up a still shaky hand to her cheek.

"Are you -" he asked.

How he could possibly be worried about her right now - she thought as she turned to press a kiss into his bandaged palm.

"Better now," she replied and meant it. "Much better.

"Hank's going to be okay, too. Still sleeping it off at Robin's. It's just you who had us - _me,_ " she hurriedly corrected, "worried."

Even though Sara knew she was doing it, she couldn't seem to keep herself from over-talking. Grissom let her. As far as he was concerned, she could keep on talking as much as she wanted as there was nothing like the sound of her voice.

"Your mother practically had kittens when Hodges told her. And she likes Hodges."

When exactly his mother had had the chance to develop a fondness for the lab's resident trace tech, Grissom had no clue. Exhausted and aching as he was, at the moment, he found he really didn't want to know.

"She was here. Your mother. Everyone. They all were."

Seeing him register the singular presence of Sara in the room with him, she said, "She went home with Hodges a few hours ago -"

"With Dave?" Grissom croaked.

Sara nodded. "She's already got him wrapped around her little finger. Apparently, it's mutual.

"She called him a _'nice young man_.'"

" _Dave_?"

"I know. I know," Sara agreed with his incredulity.

When Grissom's twitch of a smile swiftly shifted into a yawn, Sara said, "Go back to sleep, Gil."

He shook his head as if to indicate _not yet,_ despite the fact that he really was having a harder and harder time merely keeping his eyes open.

Still, he struggled to stay awake, to stay with her as long as he could.

" _Sara_ -" he started.

His mouth moved with everything he'd wanted to tell her, what he thought he would never get the chance to tell her and thus was ecstatic that he would finally have the chance to tell her.

Only the words couldn't get passed the lump of love in his throat.

There were just too many words.

 _I do love nothing in the world so well as you,_ his heart yearned to say.

While Shakespeare may have said it first and said it best, right now borrowed words just wouldn't do.

Sara, feeling very much the same and thus understanding this, gave him a wet smile, "I know. _Always_."

 _Always_ , he mouthed.

"Now sleep. It's okay," Sara assured him.

Then as if sensing the real source of his fight, she said, "I'm here. I'm not going anywhere, Gil.

"So I'll still be here when you wake. Okay?"

As his eyes drifted shut again, Grissom thought he had to already be dreaming - or at least imagining - as he had been back in the freezer. She had said as much to him then, too.

Someday he would tell her. Tell her everything. Until then, he murmured with all the sincerity of near sleep, "You were. You always were."

While Sara wasn't the least bit sure what he meant by this, before she could even begin to ask, her husband had already slipped back into slumber.

xxxxxxx

From then on, Sara slept when Grissom slept.

Curled up in a chair might be uncomfortable to say the least, but admittedly it was far better than being the one in the bed. Besides, it wasn't like she hadn't had decades worth of experience snagging sleep where and whenever she could.

Not that that rest was all that easy to come by, not when the nurses popped in every half hour or so to check vitals or replace blankets. Besides, Sara, never having been a particularly sound sleeper, frequently woke at even the slightest disturbance, especially when keyed up as she was now.

Grissom himself woke once to find her asleep beside him and despite everything found he could not help but smile at her slight snore. Though he knew she couldn't be comfortable, he didn't dare wake her, knowing all too well she needed the rest. She really should go home, get some proper sleep. But right now it was far, far too good to have her near.

In any case, before very long, her deep, even breathing soon soothed him back to sleep.

xxxxxxx

At the feel of a blanket being draped over her shoulders, Sara stirred expecting to find the charge nurse beside her. Instead, she blinked awake to find Betty Grissom there.

Before Sara could offer an explanation or excuse, Betty signed, _How is he?_

 _Better. He was awake for a little while earlier. I'm sorry,_ Sara apologized yet again. _I should have called you._

 _No,_ Betty replied, giving her a slight smile. There was much fondness and no envy in her face as she signed, _It was you he most wanted to see._

Sara rose to relinquish her space in any case.

 _You don't have to go,_ Betty insisted.

 _I'm going to go get him a fresh blanket_ , Sara offered by way of excuse, knowing as she did that Betty probably wanted - needed - a moment alone with her son just as much as Sara had needed that time alone with her husband.

Just prior to going, she leaned in, the better to murmur into Grissom's ear, "Your mother's here, Gil.

"I'll... I'll be right outside."

Only before Sara could slip passed her, Betty rested a firm hand on her arm. Sara turned. Her mother-in-law suddenly looked as if she desperately wanted to convey something, yet somehow couldn't quite find the words, which was certainly not a typical occurrence with the usually unflappable elder Mrs. Grissom.

Ultimately, Betty reached up and patting Sara's cheek, offered her perhaps the warmest smile Sara had ever seen her wear. However surprised, Sara returned it.

 _Take your time,_ Sara signed. _I'll just be -_ she indicated the other side of the glass.

Sara's sudden flush of fondness swiftly shifted into amused rue when her mother-in-law signed, _You should go get something to eat,_ in reply.

Rather than protest, Sara opted instead to just let it go and go. Although she did elect to linger for a moment in the doorway.

Apparently Betty didn't seem to know what to do any more than Sara initially had. She simply stood there, spine stiff near the foot of the bed anxiously watching her son sleep. Betty's mother eyes taking in the regular rise and fall of his chest as if mentally measuring its surety, Sara could imagine this exact same moment being played out so many times over the years as newborn baby grew from sleeping toddler to probably precocious child. The thought somehow made Sara's heart hurt all the harder.

After a moment, Betty resumed Sara's spot by the side of his bed. She tugged the blankets up a little higher, mechanically straightened the sheets over him before tentatively reaching out to smooth Grissom's short-cropped hair in the exact same way Sara was sure Betty had when he was a boy.

However the two Mrs. Grissoms might not always understand each other or seen exactly eye to eye, time had brought a healthy measure of respect and though while neither might ever admit it, a great deal of fondness.

After all, they were the two women who loved Gil Grissom most.

xxxxxxx

Despite all her best intentions over the next few hours and days, Sara had to fight not to fill the silences whenever her husband was awake. She fussed and hovered and knew it. Grissom did too, except he didn't mind it half as much as his wife seemed to. He was simply too happy to have her near again.

"You just missed your mother," Sara was currently informing him with an amused smirk. "She's going to start thinking you're trying to avoid her, Gil, as you're always asleep when she comes.

"I already broke the news, if that's what you're worried about.

"Well, she worked it out. She is your mother after all."

While he wasn't worried, he asked, "How did she take it?"

"She was oddly thrilled."

"You sound surprised." Albeit Grissom didn't.

As Sara eased the sheets about him she said, "She'll be back a little later to _check up on both of us_ \- her words."

Grissom's subsequent chuckle died away almost before it had begun as every inch of him ached down to the bone. His skin screamed with even the slightest motion. Not that he was about to admit it. Sara saw it anyway. He couldn't quite keep it from his eyes, no matter how wide the smile.

Sara rose. "I'm going to go get the nurse."

Despite the agony, he reached out to snag her arm.

"No."

"You're hurting -"

"Stay," he gasped above the pain.

" _Gil_ -"

" _Stay,_ " he insisted.

"Okay. Okay."

As she sat, Grissom took in the slight bruise in the crook of her left elbow.

"What… What happened there?" he hazarded to ask.

"Nothing -"

When he didn't appear to accept her blithe reply, she offered with a faint smile of her own, "You finally got that pint of blood out of me, that's all.

"Good thing for you I'm a universal donor."

When he continued to look perplexed, Sara explained, "Blood transfusion. They needed an additional five units to help circulate the warmth a little faster.

"Everybody came down to give. But only Hodges and I were a match."

 _Of course he was._

"He was thrilled to do it," said Sara. "So was I.

"Plus, they offered me cookies instead of your usual chocolate covered grasshoppers afterwards."

Grissom made no comment to this but a faint harrumph as if to indicate that that had been her loss.

Unable to resist the temptation any longer, Sara reached out to smooth his hair.

Except fearing at the way his eyes closed and his breath caught at the contact that she'd inadvertently hurt him, she immediately jerked her hand away.

"Don't… Don't stop…" he murmured. "Your… Your hands are warm."

With her warm words, warm eyes, warm smiles, and now her warm skin against his, for the first time since Hannah had taken him, Grissom didn't feel so chilled to the core anymore.

His words, as quiet and gentle as they were, however succeeded in undoing Sara more than anything else in the last forty-eight hours and she sobbed.

 _You... You were dead_ , she thought but did not say, admitting for the first time the reality to herself.

Despite the pain, he drew her to him until she rested in the nape of his neck.

" _Honey_ -" he said softly.

Only the endearment only made her cry all the harder.

He let her.

After a while Grissom murmured apologetically, "Honey, I - I don't have a handkerchief on me."

"I'm… I'm sorry…" Sara stammered once she could breathe again.

"Why?" he asked. "It's okay to cry," Grissom said simply.

"Besides," he added after a while, "without tears how would lacrimal moths survive?"

"Lacrimal _moths_?" Sara echoed bemused.

"Tear eaters. Some bee, fly, even butterfly species are also known do it."

Sara choked back the last of her tears. Only Gil Grissom could talk about insects at a time like this, and she loved him dearly for it.

"For the salt?" she asked genuinely curious, as moth and butterflies were known to exhibit various puddling behaviors for similar reasons.

He nodded, then said, "But mostly for their proteins. Turns out tears are so protein rich imagoes of several species subsist solely on them.

"Happens all over the world.

" _Lobocraspis griselfusa_ feasts on water buffalo tears. Madagascar's _Hermiceratodes hieroglyphica,_ the tears of sleeping birds.

"There's even a species of stingless bee in Thailand which goes for human tears whenever it gets the opportunity."

"Happy tears or sad ones? They are chemically different you know," Sara offered, pleased, beyond pleased, to hear him discourse on his beloved bugs once more.

"No clue," he replied with the hint of smile.

"So there is something you don't know?" she hiccupped.

Grissom didn't mind the tease in the least, particularly as his words had seemed to have had his desired effect: distracting Sara from her own tears. For he had always hated seeing her cry. Particularly when he knew all too well how all too often he had been the source of them.

"Plenty, dear."

His wife however proving dubious at this only replied, "Uh huh."

xxxxxxxx

Some time later, when sudden screaming shattered the pleasant peace of the past few hours, Sara started awake, instantly aware this time that the cries were not her own.

Even in the night-dimmed room, she could make out her husband shaking beneath the sheets.

Immediately on her feet, Sara slid onto the narrow ledge of the bed beside him hurriedly gathering him to her as gentle as she could.

Needing the comfort herself as much as desiring to grant him comfort in return, she stroked his hair as his shoulders shook with soundless sobs as he held on to his wife for dear life.

Though physically warm, he shivered and shivered and shivered in her arms, all too lost Sara could easily imagine in the too too near nightmarish memory of the cold which had so nearly killed him.

As he had so often done for her, Sara simply kept him close murmuring, "I'm here, Gil. I'm here," into his ear.

This time they both cried.

When a nurse charged in moments later to check on the abrupt change in the monitors, Sara met her concerned gaze with a mouthed _Nightmare_ , by way of explanation.

 _It's okay_ , she soundlessly assured her. The nurse nodded and went.

There were times when love was the best medicine. This was one of them.

After what felt like a very long, long time, Grissom finally began to still; settle against her. His breath and heart and monitor all calmed, quieted.

When his eyes finally flashed open to meet hers again, relief flooded his features.

"You're here. You really are here," he gasped, peering so intently at her it felt as if he were intent on taking her in to the very depths of her soul.

"I'm here," she assured him. "I'm here."

 _You're here. Thank God you're here._ She thought, but didn't dare utter the words aloud, afraid that in their speaking she might somehow manage to negate them.

Sara knew better than to ask him if he was okay. If there was one thing Sara Sidle knew well, it was nightmares. And nightmares never worked that way.

Talking about it sometimes helped. But Sara had the feeling Grissom needed something else that night.

It wasn't as if she was naive enough to think everything would just revert to the way it had been only days before, as if none of any of this had ever happened.

There would need to be healing and mending. Meanwhile, there would be nightmares. Fear. And ache.

Only this time, no matter what else might happen, they would face it together.

Needing her nearer, Grissom shifted albeit uncomfortably onto one side, the better to make room for her in the bed beside him. Sara took the hint. Having slipped beneath the sheet, she drew him back to her so that he rested comfortably on her chest. He let out a long low contented sigh at the return of her fingers in his hair.

"How about a game?" Sara proposed once his heart and breathing had resumed their normal rhythms; and Grissom knew she didn't mean checkers or marbles or tiddlywinks, but a bout of mental chess.

He grinned into her skin.

"Lady's first," he unnecessarily insisted as Sara always played white while Grissom wielded black, and white always went first.

After considering her move for a moment, Sara settled on: "Pawn to E4."

However strong Grissom's overwhelming fondness for his wife might be, it did not stretch to the act of letting her win. Besides, she always knew when he tried. She was clever that way that one. Very little ever did get past her, he knew, too. It was futile even to try.

Recognizing her choice of play as the opening gambit to the classical Sicilian defense, Grissom replied, "Pawn to C5."

xxxxxxx

They never did manage to finish the match that night. Despite only being within a few moves short of having his wife in check - yet again - the reassuring sure steady rhythm of her heartbeat beneath his ear, as sure and steady as her love for him, easing him as much as the distraction of the mental activity of the game, Grissom had soon dropped off to sleep - and snoring.

Both amused and pleased, Sara smiled, this being the exact effect she had intended.

While she may not have planned to follow her husband's lead quite so promptly, when the nurse poked her head in an hour later, it was to find the two of them snuggled close, fast asleep and if their deep, even breathing were any indication, peacefully dreaming.

Knowing full well the relative rarity of this, she quietly eased the door shut behind her and left them to it.

In the morning, the sole sign that the nurse had been there at all was the extra blankets draped over the bed.


	31. Thirty-one: The Lucky Ones

**Thirty-one: The Lucky Ones**

"The human body is an amazingly resilient thing," marveled Dr. Robert Davis, the attending ICU physician. "Particularly if you have something - or someone - to live for."

Reviewing Grissom's chart he said, "His prognosis looks good. So far all his tests indicate he's going to be fine. Just needs a little time is all."

Sara beamed. Time, thankfully, was something they would have plenty more of now.

"Just keep up what you're doing. It really does make a huge difference."

His phone let out an insistent buzz; he glanced down at it, giving Sara an apologetic: "I have to get this."

Knowing all too well how that worked, Sara nodded her assent.

And with a perfunctory "Mrs. Grissom -" Dr. Davis excused himself.

Sara was still smiling when she spotted Greg Sanders striding down the hall.

Apparently Greg had snagged the short straw this afternoon, stuck again with the task of checking up on things. Though he presently looked far more thrilled than miffed at the prospect.

"From that grin you got some good news," he observed.

"I did."

Even if it meant it would still be a while before she could do what she most wanted to do which was to finally take her husband home, it had been good news, great news even.

"You know," said Greg, "there's something I've been meaning to ask you with the whole you two getting remarried thing -"

In too good a mood for impatience, Sara patiently waited for him to get to his actual question.

"Does this mean we get to start calling you 'Mrs. Grissom' now?"

"In your dreams, Greg."

"That might make things a little awkward -"

Sara so did not want to know what that meant.

Thankfully, Greg was already distracted, pulling a thermos and a travel mug from the messenger bag at his side.

"Doc sent along some of the good stuff," he said. "He'd be here, but -"

"But Vegas never sleeps." Sara finished knowingly. Some things never changed.

As Greg poured some into her cup, Sara eyed the steaming liquid greedily. Gratefully, she sipped at it for a moment before letting out a long contented sigh.

With a raised eyebrow Greg quipped. "That good, huh?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?" Sara teased in turn.

"The coffee downstairs is dreadful," she said after a second long pull. "And the tea is worse. But at least it's not warm milk."

At Greg's bemused look, she explained, "Gil has this thing about warm milk."

"Cures all ills?" Greg asked.

"The sentiment helps. The actual milk not so much. But I guess Betty used to give it to him when he was a kid."

"Grissom was a kid?"

"Ha ha. Real funny."

Serious again, Greg asked, "How's he doing?"

"He was awake for a few hours."

"That's a good sign."

"Yeah."

"How about you?" Greg asked, though he already had a fairly good idea of her answer. "You been sleeping?"

"Ant naps are perfectly adequate," came her airy reply.

"Ant naps?" he echoed incredulously. "Okay, I've heard of cat naps before, but this, this I gotta hear."

As this had something to do with insects, Greg had the feeling this wasn't one of those one or two word explanation moments. He sank into a chair and waited for Sara to elucidate.

After another long sip, Sara began. "Your average worker ant - she -"

"How do you know she's a she?" interrupted Greg.

"All workers in eusocial insect societies with the exception of termites are infertile females. Sisters actually. All descended from a single queen.

"Any males produced are good for one thing and one thing only: impregnating future virgin queens. Otherwise, they're utterly useless."

Sensing this comment might have possible human connections, Greg muttered a wry, "Not a word -"

"Anyway," Sara said ignoring this, "the average worker ant doesn't work nine to five and then head home to sleep. In fact, she doesn't sleep in any conventionally recognizable sense of the word. Instead, she takes several micro naps throughout the day."

"Micro naps?"

"Each usually lasting less than a minute. Then -"

"It's back to the old grindstone," Greg surmised. "Definitely do not want to be reincarnated as an ant."

"Probably not a bee either."

"Too much hard work," agreed Greg.

Sara hemmed and hawed for a moment before saying, "Let's just say that for a male honeybee, sex is literally a once in a lifetime explosive experience."

"Literally explosive?"

"Yep."

Greg blanched at this. Gathering up his mug and bag, he said, "I think I'll leave you to that ant nap now. Sweet dreams."

"Ants don't dream," Sara automatically corrected. "Or any insects for that matter. Fish don't either. No R.E.M. cycle."

Greg rued perhaps it was good thing Sara balked at being called 'Mrs. Grissom,' she was channeling enough of the man as it was.

He was halfway down the hall when Sara called after him.

"You _know where to hide the body_?" she asked.

Greg should have realized that Grissom would rat him out about that particular conversation spousal privilege being what it was.

Shrugging he replied, "It had to be said."

Though there was now far more fondness in his tone.

Not that Sara had missed Greg's coldness towards his erstwhile boss when Grissom had been back in town with the Betton bombings. As she hadn't been exactly all that welcoming at the time, she couldn't talk.

Greg, for his part, hadn't spoken much to Grissom then. There hadn't been much of a chance. Plus, he hadn't had all that much to say to the man. Even all these years later, Greg didn't - couldn't - understand why Grissom had let Sara go so easily.

These days though, he wasn't really worried. Not after catching sight of the two of them standing close, bent over the evidence table absorbed in their earnest, yet companionable, discussion that Thursday before.

Obvious as it was even in the way they simply looked at each other, Greg couldn't imagine how the rest of them had all been so blind to it for so long.

That afternoon he'd felt like things were all right with the universe again. Perhaps now they still were.

xxxxxxx

"So," Sara began, Grissom once again awake, "you want the good news or the bad news first?"

Her husband's rejoining glare plainly suggested she pick.

"Good news it is then," she said refusing to let her good mood be the least bit dampened, even if her husband, hurting as he had to be, had every right to be a bit cranky.

"It looks like you get to keep all your fingers and toes. In mostly working order. Luckily, morgue freezers never get below freezing. So it's frostnip, not frostbite.

"Will still hurt like hell for a while though. But you already knew that."

 _Hurt like hell_ unfortunately proved to be the understatement of all understatements, as this was one of those cases where the healing hurt far worse than the initial injury.

Beneath all the bandages, his damaged skin had already begun to blister and peel. It would hurt even worse as the skin sloughed and regrew. _A bit like a really bad sunburn,_ as the doctor had explained, _only about a hundred times worse._ Sara hoped the painkillers would at least help take some of the edge off. Perhaps it was good that Grissom was averaging more than 18 hours of sleep these days. It would help with the healing.

As for Grissom, however much he really might hurt like hell, more than he ever had in his life, he was still grateful, beyond grateful to find himself here with his wife, even as yet still confined to a hospital bed. The pain was only temporary. And not near as important as the fact that he and Sara would have a chance at all that time he'd longed for back during those long, lonely, cold, dark hours in the morgue freezer. Time, perhaps not entirely enough, but at least enough to begin to tell his wife - to show her - all he'd only ever been able to hint at before.

"The bad news," Sara offered, "you might as well get comfortable. They want to keep an eye on you for while. Just in case."

Grissom wasn't surprised.

Sara sighed, "Not really the honeymoon I had in mind."

In this Gil Grissom had to agree. Though he did brighten when she added, "I guess this means I really am going to have to take you to Brisbane for the cockroach racing now."

Recalling Sara's sole stipulation for their next vacation, he added encouragingly, "They do have beaches."

"And bugs."

As he couldn't quite refute this, Grissom didn't even bother to try.

"Right now they're more concerned about the after effects of the venom more so than the cold. Doctors had to call in the resident invertebrate expert from The Springs Preserve as you weren't available for consultation.

"Bradley wanted me to tell you he hopes you feel better soon. And that he won't be complaining the next time he gets stung in the field.

"But you, you should be fine, just fine. Like I said, it will just hurt like hell for a while."

"Is your bedside manner always this reassuring, my dear?" asked Grissom.

Sara shrugged. "I guess I never thought you were a _kiss could make it all better_ kind of guy."

Grissom considered this for a moment. "It couldn't hurt to try."

Sara tried and failed not to smirk. "I love you," she murmured fondly and brushed the hint of a kiss along his forehead. "Better?"

"Could be better," he replied.

Now she really did have a hard time keeping both her incredulity and her grin at bay. Here her husband was, laid up in a hospital bed, intent on flirting with her of all things.

 _Well, two could play at that game,_ she thought.

Leaning in to place a lingering kiss on his cheek, she edged her way to that space just to the side of his mouth. When he turned to meet her, she was tempted, sorely tempted to lose herself in their kiss, but his chapped lips, she knew, had to be far too sore or sensitive for that.

Sore or no, Grissom grinned when they broke apart.

"Better?" his wife asked again.

"Much," he intoned.

Sara shook her head. "Whatever am I going to do with you?" she sighed.

Her husband had quite a few ideas, beginning with another kiss.

xxxxxxx

Having heard from Sara, Greg, Brass and her other various hospital contacts that Grissom was improving all the more, Catherine Willows proceeded down the halls of Desert Palms Hospital feeling rather pleased. And not just over Grissom's positive prognosis.

With far more satisfaction than she would ever admit to she'd noticed how over the past few days any time the guys were outside the lab with Lindsey they'd all elected to give the young woman a particularly wide berth, especially when her mother was around.

While Lindsey appeared understandably perplexed at this behavior, Catherine knew precisely what that was about.

Apparently that _little chat_ of hers a few days after she had returned to Vegas to assume the directorship had had Catherine's intended effect.

"Just the guys I wanted to see," Catherine had greeted Greg, Hodges and Henry as she stepped into the joint Trace/DNA lab that night.

At her imperious "We need to have a little chat, boys," all three blanched. None had the least clue what they could have possibly done in such a short time to incur the boss' ire.

At their pained, bemused expressions, Catherine struggled to keep her tone and mien serious as she said, "About Lindsey."

She really did have to choke back a chuckle at their obvious relief, intent on maintaining a deadpan expression as she'd been.

"Look," she insisted, "Lindsey is young and impressionable. And for some reason under the mistaken impression that you guys are actually cool."

All three men flushed and then subsequently glared, apparently torn between being pleased that Lindsey thought as much and affronted that Catherine regarded the idea as utterly absurd.

But before any of them could even begin to protest, Catherine said, "So I'm going to spell it out for you: Don't even _think_ of hitting on my daughter."

All three had been about to individually insist that they wouldn't - they'd never - when Catherine cut them off with a knowing, "Come on, at least one of you has attempted to hit on every girl who's come through that door.

"Sara -" she suggested by way of example.

"That was Dave," Greg countered, causing Hodges to insist: "That wasn't -"

"Super Dave," Greg hurriedly amended.

Hodges' momentarily satisfaction at the correction swiftly shifted into pique. "How come he got to be Super Dave?" he asked miffed.

They all ignored this.

For her part, Catherine simply continued to count the various women off on her fingers. "Mia. Wendy."

At this, Henry had the grace to look sheepish; Hodges like she had poked an old wound.

"Riley. Morgan."

Neither Greg nor Hodges could deny the latter.

The litany done, Catherine concluded, "All I'm saying is don't even _think_ about it.

"I catch even a whiff of flirtation between any of you and my daughter just remember there are far worse assignments than trash runs and de-comps and I can and will make sure you get every one of them from here to eternity. Got it?"

All three gulped, "Got it."

"Good," Catherine beamed pleased. "I'm out of here. Have a good night."

xxxxxxx

Presently eyeing Grissom and Sara through the glass, Catherine Willows recalled the last time she had seen the two of them together like this, albeit with their roles reversed. Then it had been Sara the one in the hospital bed. The love had been obvious then. It was obvious now.

Once Grissom had spoken of Sara as the only person he had ever really loved, seeing them together, Catherine could believe it.

He obviously loved her, adored her. From the way Sara was gazing at her husband, the feeling was definitely mutual.

They looked so natural together. Like they belonged. And they did.

Now that Catherine stopped to consider it, they really were a good match those two. Sara kept him present; Grissom kept her grounded. In her fight; his steadiness, his curiosity; her tenacity, his reason; her compassion, they really did compliment and help complete each other.

Catherine was glad, beyond glad, the two of them had managed to finally make their way back where they belonged. Glad, too, Hannah hadn't managed to steal their happy beginning.

 _God, was it good to see_ , Catherine mused as she thought of all of Hannah's photographs of Grissom and Sara alone together, how beyond happy the two of them had looked. That there now could be, now would be, more moments like those for her friends and not just bittersweet memories made even her ever cynical heart light.

Conrad Ecklie cut into Catherine's quiet reflections with rueful: "You know when I think back on everything that's happened over the years I'm starting to think the whole shift should be getting hazard pay. I've never heard of such bad luck."

To which Catherine simply shook her head. "No," she replied, "we're lucky."

For as much as they'd all lost, much, too, had been found.

However neither had the chance to further discuss the topic as at that moment Ecklie's phone let out an impatient ring. Giving it an equally brusque glance, he sighed, "Mayor," and stepped aside before picking up.

Eying the way the sheriff abruptly began to pick up the pace, perhaps it proved a good thing Catherine had silently mused: _Better you than me_.

Passing Hodges with a lumbering Hank in tow on his way out, Ecklie merely shook his head and said, "You know I… I don't even want to know."

Catherine however greeted the trace tech's sudden arrival with a far more friendly, yet no less perplexed, "And here I always thought you were more of a cat person.

"What are you two doing here?"

"When I called to check up on him, Robin said Hank was a little down. Wouldn't give up waiting and watching at the door," was all Hodges offered by way of explanation.

"Robin?" queried Catherine.

"The dog sitter," Hodges replied ever matter of fact. "We met at P.D.. Her number was in Sara's phone."

While Catherine supposed that did probably explain that one, she said, recalling her own passing encounter with the woman, "This doesn't have anything to do with Robin being cute?"

"No," the trace tech replied as if that thought hadn't even occurred to him. This being Hodges after all, perhaps it hadn't. Dave Hodges could regularly give Gil Grissom a good run for his money when it came to the whole being clueless about women department.

"Anyway," Catherine smiled, gesturing to the dog, "that was nice of you."

Hodges, however, didn't appear to hear her, intent as he was on the sight of Grissom and Sara through the glass. Curious as to what he'd suddenly found so riveting, Catherine returned to take in the view.

Grissom was in the midst of patting a space on the mattress beside him.

Something he had just said must have proved amusing, for Sara's smile widened as she sat.

After a moment, both their expressions turned tender as Sara drew a chain out from inside her blouse, from the end of which dangled Grissom's wedding ring. Grissom rested his palm over it and her heart; Sara beamed as she covered his hand with her own. Their heads bent together, they were close, so close, simply breathing each other in.

Knowing this to be the sort of private moment no one else needed to be observing, Catherine quickly turned aside.

"Why don't we give them a minute -" she suggested to Hodges.

Only Hodges wasn't listening. He continued to stare, a strange, almost longing look filling his features.

"Hodges? _Dave_?" Catherine nudged him in order to regain his attention.

Once his eyes were firmly fixed back on her, she indicated the boxer, "You still planning on taking Hank in?"

Abruptly yanking himself from his reverie, Hodges proceeded to hand Catherine the leash.

"You… You do it," he insisted. "I… I gotta make a phone call."

"To Italy?" Catherine asked, having heard of the fiancée.

Hodges shook his head, muttered something that sounded oddly like _Portland_ but he was already gone, phone in hand before Catherine could inquire any further.

Hank, having had enough of sitting there patiently waiting, started to tug on his lead, recalling Catherine to his presence.

Her hand hovered just above the doorframe in preparation to knock when Sara's words stopped her short.

"Don't even think about it," she was insisting. "I know that look and it's not going to work this time. I don't care if you're _concerned._ I'm fine," Sara asserted in that tone even Catherine knew brooked no contradiction.

But as quickly Sara's tone had flared, it softened. "Besides," Sara said with a smile, "you're not getting rid of me that easily, _Gilbert_.

"Ant naps are just fine," she firmly maintained.

Grissom let out an aggrieved sigh. "I'm going to regret telling you that story, aren't I?"

"Probably," Sara laughed.

Catherine's subsequent rap couldn't quite conceal her own chuckle or her grin.

"Hey," she said, "I know you're probably not really ready for company just yet, but there's someone here who's been really anxious to see you."

Hank visibly brightened as he rounded the doorway.

"Hey, buddy," both Grissom and Sara gladly greeted him.

Hank, taking this as all the permission he needed, proceeded to bound towards the bed. The boxer's knees not what they once were, age having finally begun to get the better of him, Sara had to help him up onto the mattress. Hank couldn't have cared less. He was far too intent of slathering the two of them in kisses with such unbridled enthusiasm the three humans couldn't help but laugh.

"Gentle, gentle," Sara chided to no real avail.

Besides, Grissom didn't seem to mind in the least.

As she took in the little happy family reunion, Catherine couldn't help but think: _Yes, definitely lucky._

xxxxxxx

"You should have seen Sara - I mean it was... amazing," regaled Greg. "How she figured it all out - that it was Hannah - where to find you - everything - she was..."

"Amazing?" Grissom finished with a grin of his own.

However still stuck in a hospital bed, Gill Grissom appeared very much improved, even vaguely cozy with Hank curled up by his feet at the end of the bed and his wife perched by his side. One recently rewrapped hand rested atop one of hers, as if he wasn't quite ready to relinquish the comfort of even that inhibited contact regardless of all the present company.

"And Greg's full of it," Sara intoned.

"All I'm saying is you might want to hold on to her is all," Greg replied, shooting Grissom a pointed look.

At this, Grissom folded his fingers about hers as best as he could. "I intend to," he replied.

Sara smirked at his slight squeeze.

The words having been spoken with such sincere affection, Greg figured Grissom wasn't going to have to worry about needing that shovel after all.

Catherine gave the door a firm rap before entering, rolled up copy of the day's newspaper in hand.

"Something to keep you out of trouble," she said, placing it on the small set of drawers by the bed.

Conscious of his still healing skin, she leaned in to give him a far briefer hug than she would have otherwise.

Into his ear, so low that only he - and Sara - could hear, she murmured, "You really are a lucky son of a bitch."

Then loud enough for the rest of the room, she added, "You're looking better. Still look like -"

"Death warmed over?" he supplied with a slight smile.

"I was going to say _like shit_ , but -"

Sara thought Catherine should have seen him before she had attempted to clean him up a bit. Least Sara could do after all. Grissom had done the same for her nearly a decade before.

Of course Grissom had bullheadedly refused to be pushed about in a wheelchair, so the two of them had had to suffer through the painful, near interminable walk from the bed to the bathroom with him hobbling and leaning heavily on her arm the whole while.

At the time, Sara might have seriously considered calling him _a stubborn ass_ for this, if she hadn't been far more intent on keeping him on his feet for as little time as possible. Needless to say both had been extremely relived when she had carefully eased him onto the stool in the shower.

For his part, Grissom had been more than glad to forgo the usual sponge bath for the pleasure of a real shower, particularly as Sara stripped down to her camisole and underwear to assist him.

"No reason to get you too excited," she murmured, indicating the less than hospitable hospital environment with a playful wink.

"Too late," he replied appreciatively.

To which Sara had only pursed her lips and shook her head in amusement.

Next, she'd carefully unwrapped first his hands and wrists, then his feet; eased the tape from the gauze concealing the spots rubbed raw along his back.

It would be the better part of two weeks yet before his skin went back to normal, that being how long it typically took for the body to completely slough off and replace its current stock of skin cells. And while the black and blue that stained his wrist and ankles would eventually fade, the scars from the stitch shut gouges there would ever remain. But then it wasn't like they didn't both have their scars already a plenty.

And while Sara may have blanched at the sight of his damaged skin all on display like this, by the time she faced him again, she'd found a way to compose her face back into a smile.

In any case, the two of them were soon laughing as she soaped up his hair, not once or twice, but three times with the shampoo Sara had asked Catherine to bring back from the apartment.

"There, you smell more like you at least," she said finally satisfied.

Then her thickly soap lathered hands slipped across his skin. While the touch ached and soothed all at once, Grissom hadn't been about to complain. Her love evident in every movement and motion, he cared more for the contact than any momentary discomfort.

Admittedly, Gil Grissom never had understood how something so simple as a touch and one mostly innocent at that, could mean so much, yet it did.

That day, knowing how close they'd both come to never possessing the chance to share that simple pleasure again, it felt even more so.

Careful as ever with him, Sara took as much care and time with the toweling off as she had with the washing before draping his well worn flannel bathrobe from home over her husband's shoulders to help keep him warm as she had continued to work.

Relishing despite the twinge the returned reassurance of skin on skin contact, his eyes drifted closed as he ran the tips of his fingers along the bared skin of her arm.

From the way her task-focused features twitched into a ready smile, so had his wife. Her grin had only grew when his hand reached hers and he pressed an awkwardly signed _I love you_ into her palm.

As she would have to do it when she took him home, Sara instead on replacing his bandages herself. Before wrapping them back up again, Sara placed a kiss onto the back of each of his hands. Though she did swear there was no way, not even now, that he was ever going to get her to kiss his feet.

Both chuckled at this.

"You're a quick study as ever, my dear," Grissom half-teased, half-praised his wife's near expert effort.

Giving his hair one last fond tousle, she knelt in front of him intent on determining how best to tackle his several days worth of untamed facial hair.

Having retrieved a pair of surgical scissors from the sink, his skin as yet far too raw to risk the use of a razor, she said, "You still trust me?"

His eyes sparkled at the memory of a similar question asked years ago. He replied now as he had then: "Intimately."

" _Always_ ," he further added in all earnestness.

Sara beamed.

This, too, soon done, she then traced a light layer of Vaseline onto his cracked chapped lips before leaning in to kiss him gently, yet so thoroughly that when they finally broke apart Grissom found he had to ask: "You trying to rub it off or trying to rub it in?"

"In of course," she laughed.

"Well then -" he said and drew her in for another kiss.

After all they really did make things feel a heck of a lot better, kisses.

Thus, washed and neatened up and his wounds rewrapped, Sara helped ease Grissom into something more substantial than a drafty hospital gown.

The loose pajama pants, which Sara had Catherine retrieve along with a few other things from the apartment, came on easy, the hospital provided anti-skid socks too. Nor did she have any problem with the ties of a fresh gown. The buttons of the cardigan she draped over his shoulders proved another story. In its case, her usual nimble fingers fumbled in their fastening.

"They're easier to undo," she rued at her own incompetence. "More fun, too," she added.

Grissom had to agree.

Sara couldn't believe it when he got _that look_.

Not that either could realistically do anything about it. Still, it was good to see that flicker of desire return to eyes.

"Better?" he asked, as she tugged the sweater about him.

Upon finishing finger combing his short, now mostly grey hair back into place, she gave him a long, critical once over before with a nod, she let out a mock-aggrieved sigh of "You'll do."

Thus dressed and groomed he was far more fit for company at least.

Having brushed an imaginary bit of lint from his shoulder, she said far more fondly, "I guess I'll keep you a little longer."

"A little?" Grissom echoed hollowly.

Her subsequent "Yeah" proved insouciant as ever.

When Grissom continued to look more than a little askance at this, Sara almost had to laugh.

"Weren't you the one who reminded me that time was relative?" she asked.

"Maybe," he had to concede.

"Well, if 800 years can be 'recent' to an astronomer than 'a little while' can be a very long time indeed."

"That little then?"

"Yeah. If you're lucky."

Not that Grissom hadn't already known he was that: lucky, beyond lucky.

"I already am," he said, drawing her down for another kiss.

"Come on," she urged once they had broken apart. "You've got company coming."

xxxxxxx

Jim Brass returned from the hall where he'd gone to snag another chair. Even moved out of the ICU and into a more private room as Grissom had been earlier that day, with Sara, Greg and himself already in attendance, they were already flagrantly flouting the posted visitor limits. One more wasn't going to make any difference. Besides, Brass really did know just how to sweet-talk the nurses into turning a blind eye if need be.

Catherine waved the offer to sit aside. To Grissom she said, "Actually, I need to steal your wife for a minute."

At the word _wife,_ Grissom practically beamed. Although his eyes never left Sara's form as she wordlessly followed Catherine out the door.

"You do know," Greg returned to addressing Grissom again, "that if you really wanted to get the old gang back together all you had to do was call."

Even as intent as he was observing the two women in the hall, Grissom, without missing a beat, replied, "I'll keep that in mind for next time."

"Though I thought I'd find Hodges here," Brass interjected curiously. "It's not like him to miss a party."

Or more precisely a chance to brownnose.

"He asked for a few days off. Said something about finally taking your advice," Catherine supplied as she reentered, giving Grissom a pointed look.

At Greg and Brass' puzzled faces she said, "Don't look at me. I've got no clue."

While Grissom and Sara did, neither made any reply.

Besides Grissom was far more preoccupied with how his wife was attempting to pass off her grim expression as anything but.

"Duty calls?" he asked.

Sara gave him a reluctant nod. "I gotta go for a bit."

"Hannah wants to talk."

Of course this wasn't a question. Not that Sara didn't already know how Grissom already knew this.

"You really need to quit doing that," Sara scolded. Apparently his lip-reading, unlike her ASL, wasn't the least bit rusty.

At the concerned look he was currently giving her, she said, "It's okay. _Really._ I won't be long.

"Anyway, you've got plenty of company.

"Just don't let them keep you up too late." This latter bit had been spoken loud enough for everyone's benefit.

"Yes, dear," Grissom obediently replied, much to the room's general amusement.

Then serious he said, "Be safe."

Knowing full well all the meaning those two words carried, Sara smiled. "I will."

About to lean in to kiss him good-bye, Sara appeared to reconsider in mid-gesture, much to her husband's chagrin.

Instead, she signed, _I would kiss you good-bye, but I wouldn't want to embarrass you in front of the guys._

"I don't care," Grissom replied aloud.

 _Soon_ , Sara mouthed.

Recalling all the times he'd used that word on her over the years, Sara figured it served him right. Grissom gave a short chuckle, which was all the mirth he could manage at the moment.

Greg, leaning in to Brass asked, "You get any of that?"

"Nope."

Sara smirked. "You weren't supposed to."

Nor did any of the others catch the _I love you_ Sara signed behind her back.

Grissom, however, did and grinned.

xxxxxxx

Outside one of Las Vegas Metro's interrogation rooms, both Catherine and Sara stood intent on watching a no longer smug Hannah West sitting silently sans lawyer, hands cuffed and her diminutive form decked out in vibrant prison orange.

"You know," Sara began softly, "in all her planning, Hannah forgot one thing."

"What's that?" Catherine asked.

"A bit of old Chinese wisdom: 'When you begin a journey of revenge, start by digging two graves. One for your enemy and one for yourself.'"

"You almost sound sorry for her." Catherine, for her part, sounded far more shocked at Sara.

"I am," Sara said.

"Sara," Catherine assured her, "you know you don't have to do this. And certainly not right now."

"Yeah, I do," Sara insisted and with one last determined sigh tugged open the door and strode inside.


	32. Epilogue: Chasing Rabbits

**Epilogue: Chasing Rabbits**

By the time Sara made it back to Desert Palms it was late, a lot later than she had originally intended, and well past the ward's posted visiting hours, but then marriage did have its privileges regardless of the actual time.

Still, she tiptoed into the darkened room, wishing to see, though not wake, her sleeping spouse. It was silly she knew, but after spending the day confined in an interrogation room with Hannah West, Sara wanted - _needed_ \- the comfort of her husband's snores.

Not that she would admit that to him. Ever.

She would just linger for a moment at his bedside, maybe reach out to smooth his hair, perhaps tug the covers up a little tighter; probably fail to resist leaning in to brush a kiss along his forehead before settling in to the chair beside the bed.

However careful or quiet, she apparently didn't prove careful or quiet enough, for her hushed ingress was greeted with the soft, warm sigh of "I don't even have to open my eyes. I'd know those footsteps anywhere."

Though Grissom did, as well as click on the over bed reading light.

"I was trying not to wake you," Sara rued.

"You didn't."

"Please tell me you weren't waiting up," she said.

"Just worked out that way," Grissom replied looking happy that it had. "You should have gone home, dear."

"I am home," was all Sara said by way of reply and leaned in to gently bestow the kiss she had playfully denied him earlier in front of the guys.

Despite his sore, chapped, frostnipped skin, the omnipresent whole body ache even the painkillers couldn't entirely banish away at least not without turning him into a drug-induced zombie, Grissom's subsequent grin reached all the way to his eyes.

"Soon enough for you?" she asked.

"No," Grissom replied, drawing her in to kiss her in return.

Unlike her whisper soft brief caress of a kiss, his proved long and lingering, the pure pleasure far outweighing any hint of pain.

Against her lips he murmured, _"'Da mi basia mille, deinde centum, dein mille altera, dein secunda centum, deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum_. _'"_

Sara laughed. "Translation, Gil?"

"'Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then another thousand, then a second hundred, then yet another thousand, then a hundred...'"

While not a thousand or a hundred, Sara did give him another.

Still grinning, she asked, "Brushing up on your Italian out of boredom?"

For Sara knew it had to be hard for him, being trapped here in bed all day, the prospect made all the worse by his being unable to fully use his hands.

"Latin actually."

"Close."

"More apples than oranges," Grissom countered reasonably.

Sara had to work not to roll her eyes.

"Gaius Valerius Catullus," he continued in that ever knowing way of his Sara actually loved, though would never admit to being fond of. "First Century B.C. Roman neoteric poet. His work tended towards the very... _intimate_."

"I see."

She gave him a look that plainly said _smart-ass_.

"Is that a no?" he asked.

"About the kissing? No."

And utterly unable to resist him as ever, Sara kissed him again, though she was still shaking her head when she withdrew.

Grissom apparently ignored this. Instead, he indicated a napkin draped melamine bowl on the bedside table. "Speaking of which... I saved you something from dinner."

Sara didn't even bother to attempt to smother her sarcasm. "Hospital food, yum."

She was soon singing a different tune once she'd peeled the thin paper aside to reveal the quartered half of an orange.

" _Gil_ ," Sara sighed, recognizing the reason.

The pair had been rather partial to the fruit ever since that late Saturday afternoon in Costa Rica when they had come back from their first trip to _la feria_ together and Grissom had with very little ceremony but much fondness produced a single orange from his pack. Upon deftly slicing the fruit in two before passing half of it to her, he'd murmured something in his not entirely fluid Spanish that Sara hadn't quite been able to catch, but which ultimately translated into her being _the other half of his orange_ ; the Tico version of his "other half," as he'd gladly informed her.

Back in the present he maintained, "You still are."

Sara smiled, then set about separating the peel from the flesh from first one then the other of the quarters. She passed a piece to him before biting into her own, smirking fondly as she did so at the man she knew she would never entirely figure out, but would luckily get the chance to continue to try.

Once they'd consumed their fruit in companionable silence, Sara, noting her husband had the bed and the room to himself said more statement than actual question, "I take it Hank's back at Robin's?"

Grissom nodded. "Sound asleep and snoring."

"Like you should be," Sara said. "I'm starting to think you want the doctors to throw me out."

While this possibility hadn't seemed to occur to him before, Gil Grissom seemed to seriously consider it now.

" _Gilbert_ -"

Her admonishment however lost some of its power when Sara couldn't quite conceal her grin.

"I'd ask how you're feeling," she said, "but -"

"Never ask a dumb question?" he finished, gingerly easing himself over in the bed to make a space for her to sit beside him. Sara did, feeling the full weight of the day lifting merely in his presence.

It was then that Grissom's bedside table caught her eye, its contents having increased exponentially since that morning.

Sara reached out to finger a large origami crane perched upon a neat pile of books.

"I see Greg tackled the crossword."

Grissom only scowled at the defacement of his precious puzzle.

"It wasn't all that good anyway," Sara attempted to soothe albeit to no avail.

Opting for a change of subject, she appraised the enormous bouquet of sunflowers which most certainly had not been there when she had left.

"Very cheery," she said. "Who's the admirer?"

"Not mine," Grissom replied and Sara could swear there was just the twitch of a grin. " _Yours._ It's your name on the envelope."

Her brows furrowed as Sara reached for the card. It really was her name neatly printed on the outside.

"You?" she asked.

He shook his head.

No less puzzled, Sara flipped the simple white envelope over, hesitantly popped the flap and even more bemused reached in retrieve the message inside.

Scanning the brief text, she smiled.

Odd and yet so very Betty all at once.

"From your mother," she said and passed the note over for Grissom to review.

It was his turn to turn curious as he read:

 _Sara -_

 _I'm glad. So very glad._

 _Betty_

"Glad?" Grissom echoed. "About?"

Sara indicated her wedding ring. "Us."

"Ah... Me, too," he agreed.

So did she. "Yeah. Yeah."

"Although," Grissom began his face feigning disappointment, "I'm starting to think she likes you better than me, too."

Sara didn't even bother to dignify this with a response.

"We... uh... had a long talk. Mom and I," he was still saying.

Indicating his bandaged fingers, he said, "She did most of the talking."

"About?" It was Sara's turn to echo.

He replied, "You, of course," as if it were utterly obvious.

"And -" she prompted when he offered nothing more.

Grissom shrugged. "The usual. Us remarried or no, when it comes to you, I'm still _a moron, a coward_ -"

" _And a fool_ ," Sara finished, having heard this refrain before.

Not that she hadn't occasionally - perhaps not entirely occasionally - agreed with her mother-in-law's assessment. However, she was about to attempt something conciliatory when he interrupted her intentions with an oddly pensive:

"And I don't deserve you."

" _Gil_ -" Sara sighed.

"She's right, you know."

"Perhaps," she conceded, the hint of a tease in her tone. Her next words however proved far more tender: "Thankfully, we don't always get what we deserve.

"Sometimes we get better."

Recognizing his own words in this, spoken not all that long ago to her, Grissom smiled and nodded at the truth of it.

Sara patted his hand. "I love you," she said simply and meant it.

 _God, was it good to be home_ , she thought.

Even like this, with him still attached to IVs and equipment - with hospital beds not being the most comfortable to sit or even sleep upon - with them here and not curled up on the couch in her old apartment or even better cuddled close in their narrow bunk on Grissom's boat - it was still heaven, being together like this.

Her husband broke into her musings with a nonchalant: "Oh, and apparently I need to feed you better.

"As you're 'looking too thin.' Her words, not mine," he quickly amended even if he privately agreed with the sentiment.

Even back together again as they had been these past few months that Sara was as yet almost painfully thin beneath his fingers hadn't escaped his notice.

Sara for her part fought back a sigh, but couldn't contain the wry smirk. Betty was still Betty after all. Blunt as hell. But then Betty Grissom didn't do subtle. She never had. Heck, there were times when she made her not so infrequently clueless son look positively tactful by comparison. Still, there was nothing for it. Some things didn't change. Her mother-in-law certainly proved one of them.

"Yeah, I heard," Sara half-lamented, albeit in truth more indulgent than irritated.

Grissom motioned to a large bag propped against the side of the bedside cabinet. "She left something for us.

"But first, how did it go?" he asked.

Sara didn't have to inquire after what he meant. She knew he meant Hannah. And the overly long chat that had kept her from his side for the better part of the day.

"It's over. That's probably the best that can be said."

Understanding this, he nodded. "That good, huh?"

"There won't be a trial. Hannah copped to everything."

Good thing, too, as the priority of the preservation of life had made a muddle of any evidence there might have been in the anatomy lab freezer. Not that they didn't have plenty of other evidence. Only Sara didn't relish even the possibility of giving a good defense attorney any opportunity to get Hannah West off.

"Against her lawyer's protests, of course," continued Sara. "D.A. said she didn't even attempt to deal. Took the full penalty. Only wanted one thing."

"To see you."

This was definitely not a question.

"Yeah."

From that one tight word, Grissom could imagine the conversation.

Having once been on the other side of the glass during the interrogation of said young woman before, he knew all too well what mischief the girl was capable of inflicting. He seriously doubted Hannah went gentle. From his wife's pained expression, Hannah hadn't. But sensing, too, Sara wasn't really up to discussing it, at least not here and now, he respected that fact and didn't press.

"You're okay," Sara said after a while. "Well, as okay as you can be after all of this -"

"I'm fine," he insisted and despite the energy draining pain, the entire body ache and the perpetual feeling of coldness, he was - for the most part. His cuts and bruises would heal. His blisters settle back into skin. He would likely wear jackets even in warm weather, but then he usually did that anyway. He certainly wasn't about to let Hannah have him continually looking over his shoulder. He would, however, hold Sara tighter, keep her closer and never forget how brief - and therefore precious - this life really was.

Treasure that it was, he certainly had no intention of wasting a moment more than he had to of it thinking of Miss West.

"At least this way she can't hurt you - _us_ \- ever again. At least not for a very long while."

However something in Sara's stiffness troubled him. "You don't sound all that pleased," he observed concerned.

Sara shrugged. "In the end, it doesn't really matter, not to Hannah.

"Like I said, true, she can't hurt us, but Hannah's whole life's been a prison since Marlon died. It's only the view that will change."

To which Grissom somberly intoned, "'The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.'"

"Shakespeare?" Sara asked.

"Milton. _Paradise Lost_."

"Figures."

Sara sat silent for a while. Grissom let her. Not all silences were hurtful. He simply sat there his hand covering hers, quiet.

Ultimately, she was the one who broke the silence. Although her words nearly rendered him speechless.

"I so easily could have been her," she finally said.

After all they weren't all that different: both smart, strong-willed women who while still young had to face down the loss of their families, and yet the two had taken two very different paths.

"Impossible," Grissom insisted.

Sara scoffed. "'Each of us have a heaven and hell within us.' I can quote, too, you know."

"Oscar Wilde?" he inquired, not entirely sure of the source of the quotation.

Sara nodded. " _The Portrait of Dorian Gray._

"And, Gil, we both know that nothing is entirely impossible."

This from Grissom's experience was indeed generally true. Though not in this instance.

"No, Sara -"

"Besides," she interjected with a sad half smile, "we're married. You have to say that."

"No, I don't."

"You can't say - can't know - that," Sara insisted.

"I can," Grissom persisted. "Tell me, Sara, what's the difference between a hero and a psychopath?"

Sara let out a nervous laugh. "Is this the punch line to some joke I haven't heard yet?"

Only her husband was serious. Very serious if his eyes were any indication.

"Didn't Joseph Campbell once say something about a hero being 'someone who had given his or her life to something bigger than oneself'?" asked Sara.

When this didn't appear to be the answer he was looking for she added, "What's the difference between a hero and a psychopath? Apart from the obvious? No clue."

To which Grissom began to tick off his points on his bandaged fingers. "Both heroes and psychopaths tend to be impulsive, argumentative. Have problems with authority. They break rules, even risk their lives when they know they are in the right. Any of this sound familiar?"

It did. A little too familiar. Not that Sara was about to admit it.

"The difference between them, however, boils down to a single character trait: empathy. That capacity to sense other people's emotions; to be able to put oneself in someone else's shoes. To be able to suffer with someone else - that's the heart of where the word comes from after all, etymologically speaking."

Sensing he was starting to drift into the esoteric Grissom concluded, "Something you have more of than anyone I've ever met."

"That wasn't always considered to be an asset if I remember correctly."

"It wasn't the emotion but what you did with it that worried me," Grissom replied. "I guess I didn't want to see you get hurt."

A sudden hardness crept into her voice.

"Thankfully, I didn't prove as fragile as you thought."

"No. You're the strongest person I know. I was just... being overprotective."

Not that she hadn't needed it a time or two, Sara had to concede, as annoying, vexing and infuriating as his interference had sometimes proved.

"What I'm trying to say is," Grissom finished firmly, "is no, you could never have become her. You weren't built that way."

"And I'm saying you're just saying that to make me feel better."

Which it did, truth be told.

"I wouldn't dream of it, my dear."

Still, Sara wasn't sure she bought this. "Cite your source, Gil."

This complete non sequitur caught Grissom off guard. "What?"

"Prove it. Cite your source."

Grissom goggled at her for a moment before stammering, "Article in _Scientific American_ 2011 - April, no, March, I think.

"You got your phone on you? I could pull up a copy for you."

Sara laughed, recalling quite another conversation playing out in much the same way only in reverse. Grissom, too, must have caught on to the similarity as he gave her an equally amused grin him reply.

Old times. Good times. Thankfully, there would now be time for new times equally good.

"You forgot something," Sara said with a smile of her own.

"You.

"You believed in me when I could no longer believe in myself.

"That - _you_ \- changed everything."

"No, you did that all on your own," Grissom insisted.

"It's not like you to dismiss the power of faith, _Gilbert_.

"Don't."

Understanding, he nodded.

"And the Freeman trial?" he asked after a bit, not sure if he really wanted to bring it up, not when Sara was finally back to smiling again, but it was after all what had brought them to Vegas in the first place.

"Still mired in jury selection and judicial motions," she replied. "And will be for the rest of the week."

The delays - and the rancor - didn't bode well; unfortunately presaged an even more difficult than usual trial to come.

Yet she smiled and that tease was back in her tone. "But you'll be rid of me for a while soon enough. Finally get your peace and quiet back. A chance to enjoy that pumpkin of yours."

To which Sara was happy to see her husband giving her a look which plainly indicated he wasn't in the least bit of a hurry. That though he did still value his solitude, he treasured his wife's company far too much to ever willingly wish it away.

As for why she could still smile over the whole thing: after nearly losing Grissom, the trial, having her and her mother's history publicly outed, none of it seemed as monumental a deal as they had to her only a few days before.

Sure, it would still suck. And yes, Sara still had to break the news to the team. They had had far too many surprises foisted on them already as of late.

Sara would deal with the defense when it came. Like she always had and did.

For while Grissom wouldn't likely be able to sit in the gallery during the trial now, she knew he'd be with her all the same. And that, she knew, too, was what mattered most.

Giving the large parcel beside the bed a gentle nudge, Sara asked, "So what's in the bag?"

Grissom shrugged. "Mom didn't say. I didn't ask."

"That doesn't sound like you," said Sara.

If curiosity could kill, as it did the proverbial cat, Gil Grissom would have exhausted his nine lives a very long time ago, likely long before Sara Sidle had even been born.

Grissom simply shrugged again. "Mom just said something about a wedding present that might come in handy."

Both wondering and reticent at the same time, Sara placed the bag onto her lap. It proved heavy, but not too heavy, the contents soft rather than hard.

Her brown eyes went wide as she extracted from the tissue paper wrappings an antique patchwork starburst wedding ring quilt. While the blue and greens and golds might show signs of the slight fading of time, the fabric itself remained in pristine condition. Sara ran her fingers across the neat line of what were obviously hand-fashioned stitches.

"It's... It's beautiful," she gasped.

Sara wasn't the only one awestruck. Grissom, recognizing precisely what Sara held in her hands, stared agog.

"It... It was my parents'," he stuttered still dumbstruck himself. "A wedding gift from my grandmother. My father's mother. I don't think I've ever seen it off mom's bed."

The explanation even more than the actual gift floored Sara. Tears began to itch at the corners of her eyes, touched as she proved more than she could ever say by her mother-in-law's gesture.

"I... I have something for you, too," Grissom said reaching for the pile of books on top of the bedside table. "Had Greg bring it by."

When his sausage thick fingers fumbled at the volumes more than grasped, Sara stepped in to help.

"The wrapped one," he indicated, frustrated and yet grateful for the assistance all the same.

How Sara could have missed the slim, plainly wrapped package perched beneath his reading glasses and a copy of _The Life of Pi,_ she never knew.

"Was saving it for Christmas -" Grissom said.

Sara turned the package in her hand. "I thought we agreed we weren't exchanging gifts this year."

"Like that has ever worked."

 _True._

Sara already had a package for him squirreled away back on the _Ishmael_. Not that Grissom was to know that. Or at least she hoped her husband didn't. The boat, while not all that large, did provide quite a plethora of hiding spaces. Whether he knew of hers...

Still staring at the gift, she observed, "It's barely past Thanksgiving."

"Feels like Christmas to me," Grissom countered.

"Besides, Christmas isn't really Christmas you know. The twenty-fifth of December wasn't established as a Christian holiday until 336 A.D.

"Set then to coincide with the Roman holiday of Saturnalia. The early church leaders figured that if you couldn't simply banish pagan traditions, it was best to adopt them.

"The historical record places the actual birth of Jesus some time during our summer months.

"So Christmas is more a state of mind than an actual date."

His impromptu lecture complete and Sara still sitting there gobsmacked, Grissom nudged her. "Go on," he urged. "Open it."

As Sara undid the neatly knotted string, he added, sounding particularly pleased with himself, "I finally managed to track down a first edition. Stumbled across it in the back of Shakespeare and Company of all places."

"So that's where you disappeared off to that afternoon," Sara replied thinking of the day she had returned from some last minute solitary shopping of her own to find Grissom gone from their _hôtel Paris_.

Thus when she peeled back the brown paper, Sara wasn't surprise to find a thin volume rested inside. Aged and a little page worn, the well-read and obviously well-loved copy smelled of books and time, time far greater than either all of her or Grissom's years.

That it proved to be a children's book, she hadn't expected.

On its cover, the title _The Velveteen Rabbit_ by Margery William punctuated the sepia sketch of a worn, winsome plump plush rabbit perched on a tiny hillock.

Sara smiled.

"I haven't read this in ages," she said.

Still a bit confused, she added, "I know your grandfather kept them, but since when are you into rabbits?"

"It's not about just any old rabbit," Grissom replied. "As to why, look inside."

Having carefully eased the cover open, Sara flipped the first few blank pages aside, only to find herself caught up short at the sight of the inscription.

There in Grissom's neat hand, the one reserved not for crossword puzzles or case files or supervisor signatures, but for love letters and more meaningful ephemera, he had scrawled:

 _Thankfully, never needed a blue fairy._

 _I have you._

 _\- G_

Her fingertips lingering over the ink, her heart twisting, nearly aching with love, Sara peered up at her now again husband in speechless joy.

When she extended the book for him to read, he shook his head.

"You."

Giving her that beseeching look Sara never could ever resist and having painstakingly shifted onto one side, Grissom padded the space on the bed beside him. Sara, taking the hint, carefully so as not to jostle him or brush against his damaged skin or upset his IV, slipped between the sheets, drawing Betty's gift over them both as she did so.

As the two nestled nearer, Sara thought her mother-in-law was indeed right about one thing: the quilt definitely did come in handy, very handy, indeed.

The two having contentedly resumed their earlier cozier positions: Grissom's head on her shoulder, his hand resting at her waist, Sara propped the book against her belly the better for them both to see.

Awkwardly, Grissom rifled the pages until he had found what he wanted.

"Here. Start here," he insisted.

So Sara did.

"'What is REAL?' asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. 'Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?'

"'Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.'

"'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit.

"'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't really mind being hurt."

"'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?'

"'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby.'

"I rather like you loose in the joints and shabby," interjected Sara.

To which Grissom only gave her a rejoining _Go back to your reading_ glare.

"'But these things don't matter at all,'" Sara read, "'because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.'"

Sara leaned in, the better to snuggle with him.

"'I suppose you are Real?' said the Rabbit. And then wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.

"'The Boy's Uncle made me Real. That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can't become unreal again -'

From memory, Grissom finished the last of the line for her:

"'It lasts for always.'"

Finis

xxxxxxx

AN: _Chasing rabbits._ That's what we used to call it all those years ago - more than ten now if the date stamps on my files are correct - following where all those plot bunnies took you.

And over the years they have certainly covered the miles and run the gamut.

I first started writing fanfic because I'd read a bit — okay admittedly more than a bit of it — and thought it would be fun to try my hand at it. Plus, as there were so many unanswered questions, so many blank spaces left ready to be filled, I just couldn't resist.

I certainly never expected to end up writing 102 stories nor to love it as much as I have nor to have learned more than I could ever have imagined, from all the science to all the seemingly insignificant details that make up the magic of life, to life itself and love and even how to (hopefully) be a better writer.

These stories have been with me through more than a decade's ups and downs, highs and lows. In sickness and health. During moments of joy and grief. Of love and loss. All of life I suppose.

And I wouldn't trade that for anything.

For those of you who have suffered through prose part of that journey with me I am and will forever be grateful. A story is nothing but yet another collection of lifeless words without a reader to bring them to life.

These stories - whatever life — magic — reality — they've become are as much your doing as it is mine.

Thank you.

They say things end —

That's true. But they begin, too.

With equal parts gratitude and hope I leave these pages — these stories — both in your quite capable hands and to your infinite imaginations.

To happy beginnings —

Never forget to make the most of them.

Karen

March 2018


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